Director: Edoardo De Angelis
Thirteen-year-old Giovanna hears her father compare her to a woman she has never met, and the offhand remark sends her looking for an aunt her family has spent years keeping out of sight.
What is The Lying Life Of Adults about?
Set in 1990s Naples, the series follows Giovanna as she crosses from childhood into adolescence and starts questioning everything her comfortable, educated family has told her about itself. Curious about the aunt she overheard mentioned, she seeks out Vittoria, a relative who lives in the city's rougher lower districts and speaks about the family's past in a way that contradicts everything Giovanna's parents have presented as settled fact. Moving between her parents' polished apartment in the hills and Vittoria's blunt, unvarnished world below, Giovanna begins to see how much of adult life is built on convenient omissions and rehearsed stories. Her search for her own reflection becomes a search for which version of Naples, and which version of her family, is actually true.
Cast & crew
Giordana Marengo makes her screen debut as Giovanna, carrying nearly every scene with an unguarded, watchful presence that suits a character learning to read adults for the first time. Valeria Golino plays her mother with a controlled surface that slowly cracks over the six episodes, while Alessandro Preziosi gives the father a charm that curdles the longer Giovanna pays attention to it.
Context & significance
The series adapts Elena Ferrante's 2019 novel of the same name, keeping her close focus on interior class anxiety and the divide between Naples' wealthier heights and its poorer, more crowded neighborhoods below. Director Edoardo De Angelis shot on location across the city, using its geography almost as a second cast member to mark the gap between how Giovanna's family presents itself and where its history actually comes from.
Where & how to watch
The Lying Life of Adults is available to stream on K-Time with a free account login, and Farsi-speaking viewers can follow Giovanna's story through Persian dubbing or Persian subtitles, with the platform's interface fully available in Persian as well.