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What is the origin of the film project?
- Philippe Harel: Three years ago, after having read Michel’s novel, I immediately wanted to make
an adaptation. I therefore sent a fax to the editor and Michel replied.
We met at his place one or two days later. After about a quarter of an hour of familiarisation,we’d
begun to communicate.
Michel Houellebecq, did you know Philippe Harel’s films?
- Michel Houellebecq: Yes. Not long after the publication of the book, someone advised me to
see UN ÉTÉ SANS HISTOIRES. I didn’t find it but I did stumble upon L’HISTOIRE DU GARCON QUI VOULAIT QU’ON L’EMBRASSE. I really liked it.
Did you have a feeling of a common universe between each other?
- Philippe Harel: Michel manages to clearly formulate things that I feel.
I have difficulties to write, to use vocabulary. He manages to synthesise.
He is a clarifying person. After our first meeting, I decided to read all that he had written, or what
had been written about him. His interviews as well as the articles about him.
He also gave me some texts that had never been published. I felt that the film would surpass the scope of the book, that the poems and the short texts could equally be useful to me. Indeed, from the very beginning I wanted Michel to take part in the adaptation. This was very important to me.
- Michel Houellebecq: The central point of the story is that Philippe arrived at the right time.
When you’ve finished a book, you’re completely fed up with everything for a while. Then it can be a good thing to participate in this adaptation.
How did your collaboration go?
- Philippe Harel: We did plenty of work by returning to the places which were described
in the book.
- Michel Houellebecq: Yes, this was very important to me.
- Philippe Harel: Michel first took me to some Parisian locations.
- Michel Houellebecq: Yes, like Le club 78. And then we went to Rouen together.
- Philippe Harel: The writing was done at the same time as the location scouting.
Some sets were very easy to find as they simply corresponded to some places that Michel knew
and from which he got his inspiration. There are others like 'La Bohème', the night club in Rouen
that we discovered together.
- Michel Houellebecq: Great evening, indeed...!
Had you searched for locations yourself in preparing the novel?
- Michel Houellebecq: I was living in Rouen, actually. I wrote many parts there. I also knew Les Sables d’Olonnes. The real surprise was La Roche-sur-Yon. I had made up an image of it without actually ever having been there and it’s even better than I thought: there’s a fascinating variety of administrative buildings. The only problem is that you have too great a choice!
What were your first ideas about the adaptation?
- Philippe Harel: In the novel, the theoretical parts are often led by animal fables and I knew straight away that it would not be possible to include them. They had to be replaced by something else, an equivalent.
- Michel Houellebecq: On the other hand, the most difficult theoretical parts - that's to say on the
'extension of the struggle' - were kept and happened at the same time. The same for the dis-
course with the psychologist, which has actually been prolonged.
What made you think that the animal fables didn’t have their place in the film?
- Philippe Harel: Intuition.
I didn’t have a feeling for it - even though I’d certainly have adored to film the cows, the sequences would have become too long and would have implicated Our Hero from the beginning in the activity of writing. I found it more interesting that the character only starts to write in the
latter part of the film, as if there were no longer any other means of keeping him alive.
Was the use of the two voice-offs imposed from the beginning?
- Philippe Harel: Yes, from the initial outline. It encapsulated my feeling that the novel speaks about the present world like a future which has already happened, something like science-fiction.
- Michel Houellebecq: At the beginning, Our Hero makes some kind of commentaries on life and the narrator can allow himself to make commentaries about him, to signal his errors.
As we progress, it becomes increasingly more difficult for Our Hero to show off. We were con-
scious that his interior voice had to be progressively diminished when he becomes touched directly.
Certain extracts of the voice-off at the beginning make an allusion to PARTICULES ÉLÉMENTAIRES (ATOMISED)...
- Michel Houellebecq: No, in fact it comes from an extract on my book on Lovecraft.
- Philippe Harel: There are other borrowings from diverse texts by Michel.
When Our Hero says: 'When I wanted to be happy, I envisaged having dancing lessons', it’s from a poem.
- Michel Houellebecq: As well as the idea of the washing-up liquid quoted in the diary, the insect on the carpet or the light bulb exploding. There are also echoes of interviews that I’ve given, especially during the conversation between Our Hero and the psychologist on the matter of no longer talking about the soul, the psychology.
And the shots of the particles, isn’t that a reference to the novel?
- Philippe Harel: No, because at that time it hadn’t been written. It was again a reference to Michel’s book on Lovecraft. And also a vision that I sometimes have when I fall asleep.
The film has a timeless quality. The sets are sometimes reminiscent of the 1970s, sometimes of the 1980s, and there’s no basis in a more contemporary reality.
- Philippe Harel: It comes from Michel’s writing. From his way of using the present by immediately installing a distance.
- Michel Houellebecq: It’s a Schopenhauerian film! Schopenhauer advised us to live the present as if it was already the past.
- Philippe Harel: That’s cinema, in fact. It’s actually the reason why cinema is so well suited to nostalgia.
You filmed the night clubs without ever portraying the trendy side.
- Philippe Harel: Because trendy people are a minority, 95% of the population is neutral.
- Michel Houellebecq: When you go to a night club in the provinces, there’s usually some techno most of the time, but all the same something has to happen, so it always ends with fifteen minutes of smooching. It’s how it works.
When Our Hero goes to a porn cinema, you chose to show the extracts of the
film - which exposed the film to being restricted (in France) to a 16 certificate. Did you feel that it was truly necessary?
- Philippe Harel: Anyway, the film isn’t for the under 16s. It’s not an audience that we’re going to
lose, it’s an audience that wouldn’t have come anyway. I found it difficult to film a character going
into a porn cinema without showing what he’s going to see. Also, it allowed a theoretical part on movement in films which was both funny and meaningful. But the shot I like best is probably the
one where we are situated behind the character, where we can only see the bottom of the screen!
The arrival of Tisserand, almost constitutes a second part in the film.
- Philippe Harel: The beginning of the film corresponds to the colder part of the story.
To the solitude of Our Hero, and to his progressive detachment from the world. With Tisserand,
the film swings over to a pure state of emotion. His arrival actually corresponds to the beginning
of the second movement.
Michel seems to have served as a model. There is an effect of amazing mimicry in the film.
- Philippe Harel: There is an autobiographical part in the novel.
Michel did serve as my model, actually He gave a coherence to my interpretation. And it’s true that we’ve got some common points, a similar difficulty to speak. Seeing him for several months, going to his place, all of that gave me some points of reference. The clothing also helped me a lot.
Once I even went to film Michel, who for the first occasion went to a dancing class. So I danced like him for the first time in the film. With the exception that during the filming, Our Hero makes progress, unlike Michel!
Why did you change the end of the story?
- Philippe Harel: The end of the novel is powerful from a literary point of view, but I thought it
wasn’t working dramatically from a cinematic viewpoint. Indeed, I wanted to go further. I didn’t want to end on an immobile man. It’s not a situation that can last. He either kills himself or decides to be happy. The obsession with dance is one thing that I’d found everywhere in Michel’s writing.
It’s true that dance allows a basic form of communication. Anybody, without even saying a word, with only gestures, can invite a woman to dance. It’s usually afterwards that it gets bad.
It’s what actually happens to Tisserand.
- Michel Houellebecq: The film begins and ends with a dance.
- Philippe Harel: Yes. At the beginning, it’s a woman dancing on her own and getting undressed.
At the end, it’s a couple waltzing.
The final change, far more optimistic, changes the tone of the story considerably. Wasn’t it a problem?
- Michel Houellebecq: I must have doubted it for a while. But I haven’t really discussed it.
- Philippe Harel: Actually, you didn’t quite like the end yourself.
- Michel Houellebecq: It’s true that I find it good on a literary level, but that I like it is less than the
rest of the novel. I can even say that it’s the whole third part that I don’t find as good, from when
Tisserand dies. I’m less interested in the hero. It has to be understood as well that my ending is
tactile. It creates the impression that he’s a prisoner within himself, that he sees his skin as a separate entity. Perhaps this isn’t transposable in cinema. And this ending was also situated in the little thematical 'nature' of the book. In the same way as we dropped the animal fables, perhaps it was a good thing that there weren’t any cows here either.
You seem to share the same attraction for slightly average heroes.
- Philippe Harel: I love statistics. People believe they’re free but in reality they’re the result of easily definable parameters. From this point of view, there are no surprises to be had. It’s even more true of the business world. There’s no need to show off or to try to be original. You have to take what’s most common. The only room for freedom in dress-codes are ties and socks. I don’t have any contempt for this type of universe. I only find this testing in the same way as when I watch TV game shows.
- Michel Houellebecq: It’s much the same in the night clubs. It’s easy to calculate who can pick up who. I tried several times and I seldom made a mistake.
Do you define your characters as 'mediocre'?
- Philippe Harel: What I don’t like about this label is the position that is supposes.
- Michel Houellebecq: I accept the label on the condition that I myself can be considered medi-
ocre. What actually gives me strength is the fact that I have quite ordinary desires.
I have normal reactions to miniskirts at the Club Med. I’m immediately quite certain that my desires are unanimously shared.
- Philippe Harel: What’s mediocre to me is people that see themselves differently from what they
actually are, when there’s a step between their representation of themselves and what they
fundamentally are.
You use the expression 'sacrificed generation' when speaking about the heirs of sexual liberation.
- Philippe Harel: Here, there’s a little lyricism!
- Michel Houellebecq: In fact, it’s women who are more concerned because men are incapable
of loving. What they want from the start is sex. Whereas women want sex AND love. When you read Elle it’s quite clear that they want passion, love, eroticism, family life, tenderness.
- Philippe Harel: Like Tisserand.
- Michel Houellebecq: Yes, there are nice men, no need to exaggerate! But the big difference is that women don’t want to renounce anything.
- Philippe Harel: It’s true that the capacity for renounciation is stronger in men. Maybe that’s why
they can be sailors or soldiers!
Do you envisage working together again?
- Philippe Harel: Of course. But this time I would prefer that we write an original script, that the whole process will be done together. I will find it interesting to see how Michel will be directly confronted by the cinema. It has something to give him.
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