[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxtoKAvtWI&]

Trailer to Possibility of an Island

On September 10 France will get the chance to see Michel Houellebecq‘s own film adaptation of The Possibility of an Island[1]. It was rumored that Rem Koolhaas would design the decors, but in the end he did not, I believe. Fernando Arrabal was prominently present at the film’s recording.

Houellebecq is a contemporary French writer and everyone’s current cult favourite.

He has his detractors however … he was disparagingly compared to Thomas Bernhard by a friend “with infallible judgement” of litblogger Stephen Mitchelmore in 2005[2] and English novelist Will Self, commonly called the French counterpart (see equivalents and synchronicity) of Houellebecq, described his equivalent as “just a little guy who can’t get enough sex” (The Trouble with Michel).

I’ve yet to read Bernhard and Self. Since I haven’t read The Possibility of an Island, I’ll try to catch the film, but … after seeing Eichinger’s botched adaptation of The Elementary Particles … I fear for the worst. The only film adaptation of Houellebecq I can vouch for is Extension du domaine de la lutte by Philippe Harel. That was an excellent film. From the trailer of Possibility, I can only say that the film feels like another Jahsonic fave: Christophe Honoré‘s 2004 My Mother, probably due to the shared Ibiza scenery.

Staying with French literature, Anglophone litblog A journey round my skull celebrates Maurice Blanchot‘s “The Madness of the Day“. [3][ notes].

Post scriptum: I didn’t publish yesterday‘s notes. If you wish to follow my daily note-taking, visit my bliki.

Previously at Jahsonic: Carnivalesque damsels