Game, set, Maggie

If you’ve read anything by Elena Ferrante, you’ll know the pseudonymous Italian author is an expert at capturing the complexities of womanhood. This is exactly what drew Maggie Gyllenhaal to her writing. ‘I never heard some of the things that she was writing about articulated before, and I found it really kind of stunning and shocking,’ she says. The famously reclusive author granted permission for the adaptation of on the basis that only Maggie could direct it. ‘She said it had to be me, which I took as a real vote of confidence,’ Maggie says. ‘I needed that at the time.’ It’s evident that Ferrante made a prescient choice: Maggie has turned the author’s third novel into a cinematic masterpiece. As a woman director, she is able to capture Leda’s experience with