The Elementary Particles (2006)
Written and directed by Oskar Roehler
From the novel by Michel Houellebecq
Famous for his dyspeptic view of late 20th century culture, Houellebecq has dreamt of a third paradigm, following Roman civilization and Christianly, the fruits of the Enlightenment and science, to supplant the failed progeny of Adam, with a Mark II model, through biological engineering , a being asexual and immortal, but like identical twins with identical DNA, of individual personality and mysterious fraternity, something on the order of Jean-Paul in Les Météores by Michel Tournier, perhaps the sublime fusion, the unattainable of the hero of Extension du domaine de la lutte Exibit A the need for a replacement is Bruno Klement(Moritz Bleibtreu) abandoned by his mother as a baby, perhaps forever crippled in the ability to love, of feverous sexuality of a horny adolescent, so lacking in control to expose himself to a 15 yo female student of his class, unable to view women as any other than sex partners, losing his wife and son by his constant company of prostitutes, in short, the 20th century male run amuck. By contrast, his half brother, Michael Djerzinski (Christian Ulmen) also abandoned by their hippy mother, is introverted to a crippling degree, but through that isolation, produces the salvation, the ideal human, the new Adam. The film forefronts the drama/sexuality of the novel and as the step brothers are not appealing figures, and Bruno in his relentless hunt for intercourse repulsive, the plot is lost. The SyFy aspects of the novel would offer a fertile basis for an intelligent film of a way out of what should be apparent , a no exit situation for humanity.

The perfect cow. Michael Djerzinski’s first success with genetic engineering.