By the time Alba Rohrwacher appears onscreen in the fourth season of My Brilliant Friend, we already know her voice. The Italian actress had been narrating HBO's adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novels, about the lives of two book-loving, quietly competitive friends from a poor Naples neighborhood, since its first episode in 2018. But to incarnate Elena "Lenù" Greco in her final form, Rohrwacher faced a daunting task: replacing Margherita Mazzucco, whose brooding portrayal of Lenù from adolescence through early adulthood dazzled viewers in the first three seasons.
Season four, subtitled The Story of the Lost Child, finds Lenù consumed by her affair with Nino, hauling her daughters back to Naples to live with him and, after he betrays her, growing closer with Lila (now played by the sublime Irene Maiorino) than ever before. The friends each give birth to a daughter, and their girls in turn become inseparable.
Rohrwacher "unites the voice to the face," as she puts it, in the final season, capturing Elena's strength and fragility at the moment her desires and actions finally align. Now middle-aged and a successful writer, Rohrwacher's Lenù is more defiant and demanding, even as she maintains the cool observation Mazzucco brought to the part.
It was interesting to be with a character so ambiguous, controversial, and enigmatic. I was on her side every day. I understood her and empathized with her. But I was so happy that she slowly freed herself.
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