Upamanyu Biswas
Netflix’s Italian coming-of-age series ‘Adoration’ revolves around a young teenager named Elena whose shocking murder in a peaceful community leads to a series of doubts emerging among the local residents. As everyone scrambles for the truth behind the girl’s death, people try to make sense of all the contributing factors that might have played a part.
Directed by Stefano Mordini, the show is told through the eyes of a number of characters, primarily focusing on the perspective of Elena’s best friend, Vanessa, who embarks on a quest of her own to pin the real culprit responsible for Elena’s murder. It explores themes of adolescence, friendship, sexuality, identity, family, and facing up to adversity as a young adult.
Adoration is a Teen Mystery Drama Based on a Novel
Originally titled ‘Adorazione,’ ‘Adoration’ is a fictional story adapted from Alice Urciuolo’s eponymous Italian novel, which centers on a complex teen drama about a young girl’s disappearance and the assumptions that surface in her local neighborhood as a result. The show is penned by Donatella Diamanti, Giovanni Galassi, and Tommaso Matano and tells a tale of escalation through the perspective of the people who know Elena, the missing girl, and the murder mystery that grips everyone in her neighborhood. The story jumps from character to character, providing a more comprehensive look into the effect a teenager’s death can have on the entire community and how it affects people moving forward.
Urciuolo was twenty-four when she started writing the story, an age when she felt distinctly in touch with her teenage years and held a more reflective approach in her gaze when looking back at her adolescence. She wanted to embody the feeling of being looked down upon as a youngster through the narrative, a recurring element within every character’s life in her novel and the show. To that end, she highlighted the orthodox point of view held by most Italians that unless one was of a certain age, nothing serious or worthwhile should be expected of that person. She explained in an interview, “It becomes a barrier, especially when people think they know exactly what you can offer, assuming that due to my traits, I can only write stories for women, about women.”
Adoration Embraces a Multi-POV Narrative Style to Provide a Deeper Dive Into Community
One of the overriding aspects of ‘Adoration’ is how it never constrains itself to a single character when uncovering its mystery. The narration is never wedded to any single character or features a protagonist as such. Instead, it adopts a more holistic view by looking into the whole drama from everyone’s point of view. This was a deliberate storytelling choice made by Alice Urciuolo while she was penning her book. She felt strongly that the story should dive into the community where Elena grew up, as it is the basis of her desires, needs, ambitions, and life experiences. Thus, the writer changed from her initial choice of first-person narration to reflect the complex nature of a community composed of several individuals with their own wants and needs.
The show faithfully recreates the book’s central essence by devoting equal amounts of time to each and every character, whether good or bad, creating a sense of understanding within the audience for everyone involved. In the same interview, Urciuolo said, “The small community I depicted is a reflection of the places I come from, and I still remember how people scrutinize each other and how strongly judgment is felt.” This deeper dive into the community’s small-town nature creates a duality within the story. It highlights how everyone knows everyone within the neighborhood. At the same time, it also highlights the societal pressure that often leads to miscommunication and misunderstandings, exacerbating the central issues faced by the characters.
Adoration Centers on the Prescient Issue of Femicide and Rejection
Undoubtedly, the most important subject explored in ‘Adoration’ is the death of Elena and how it highlights a concern surrounding the violence women are subjected to in domestic settings, often leading to harrowing cases of murder. Although the show provides a glimpse into the heavy subject matter through an intricately layered narrative brimming with twists and turns, it manages to capture the reality of how these deaths are often the result of a multitude of reasons. This message is particularly reflected through the multi-POV aspects of the show and the glimpses it provides into people’s inadequacies. “An event like femicide doesn’t just concern one of us, but all of us,” Alice Urciuolo said about the topic. “Every girl could have been Elena, and every boy could have been Enrico, even if he never killed.”
‘Adoration’ is an intimate examination of the overbearing and pressurized environment of being a teenager and being confused about where life is heading. Again, parts of these experiences were directly lifted from the novelist’s own feelings of rejection growing up in her hometown. She admitted that she wanted to escape because she felt unwanted in her neighborhood, something that Elena shares in the story. This feeling of not belonging in the place you grew up becomes the driving force in the young girl’s life and compels her to seek distractions that will somehow allow her to flee the place that has never accepted her. While it may not be everyone’s experience, there is universality in the idea of feeling lost and disconnected in one’s teenage years that most people can relate to while watching the show.
Read More: Netflix’s Adoration Ending, Explained: Who Killed Elena?
