The Friend (notes on the novel)

I watched “The Friend” (reviewed yesterday) about a month ago, and since then, I have begun reading Sigrid Nunez’s novel on which it is based. I’m not going to say the book is better or worse; it’s just different. (Ok, it’s also definitely not worse.) To wit, this week I read a passage in which for a couple of pages the narrator does nothing more than describe the plot of the 2002 Swedish movie “Lilya 4-ever” about the human trafficking of a young girl in the Soviet Union. I saw it once, many years ago, sort of knowing what I was getting myself into, but not entirely knowing what I was getting myself into. And though Google indicates the movie is only an hour-and-forty-nine minutes, I would have sworn it was three-and-a-half hours, not because it’s endless or endlessly bad but because it’s a grueling experience, and an indelible one too, as Nunez writes, so much so that like the narrator I never felt the need to go through it again. And yet, when the narrator mentions the movie often being shown to humanitarian and human rights groups, she also mentions that when it was shown to group of Moldovan prostitutes, their review was, “Not brutal enough” [italics hers]. Not brutal enough.

That part is not in the movie.