“Elementary Particles”, freely adapted from Houellebecq, on France 2

© Lionel BONAVENTURE/AFP/Archives

“Les Particules Elementaryes”, a television fiction very freely adapted from the novel by Michel Houellebecq, is broadcast on France 2 Monday evening, with a character from Michel who inevitably evokes the famous writer .

The public channel, which programs this fiction at 9:10 p.m., speaks of the book as a “monument of contemporary literature, which paints a fierce and moving satire of modern society undermined by solitude and individualism”.

Released in 1998, and crowned with the November Prize, this dark novel, which speaks of sexual misery, the ravages of the absence of a mother and cloning, propelled Michel Houellebecq towards fame.

Fans won't exactly recognize the original plot, however. The screenwriter Gilles Tauran takes great liberties with the details of the novel, but keeps the backstory: the chaotic journey of two half-brothers, Michel, a gifted antisocial biologist, and Bruno, a graduate of letters and sexually obsessed.

This character of Michel Djerzinski, passionate since childhood about parthenogenesis (animal reproduction without a male), is played as an adult by a very Houellebecquien Jean-Charles Clichet.

He is slightly neglected physically, possessed by his research, living as a “hermit” in an Olympiades tower in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, but pleasant in conversation, even when he appears completely out of step with the society around him.

The childhood of Michel Djerzinski, as it is filmed, lets us imagine that of Michel Houellebecq. Abandoned by divorced parents, the two were raised by their grandmother in a quiet Seine-et-Marne.

The book had angered Houellebecq's mother , portrayed – under her real name – as preoccupied above all with her own life. This is still the case on screen.

“In the heads of Michel and Bruno, there are a lot of things happening. It's moving, it's happening. 'agite', explains director Antoine Garceau in an interview with France 2.

According to him, “it's a film which, I have the impression, calls for a lot of close-ups, a lot of presence on these characters, because they are so strong and well written.”

This is the second adaptation of this novel, after a 2006 German film.

Michel Houellebecq released his eighth novel on January 7, ” Annihilate.” According to his publisher Flammarion, he sold 170,000 copies.

And according to the GfK rankings published by Livres Hebdo, he spent three consecutive weeks at the top of the sales charts of books.

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