Atomised

Houellebecq’s “Atomised” is a science fiction story told from the perspective of a utopian future free of individualism and sexuality, the two points where capitalism has us under its thumb. The stories these “new people” from a chronologically close but mentally distant time tell of earlier lives are like plunging headlong into a world of horrific agony. André Jung is the much-pained Bruno, socially maladroit yet obsessed with sex; his half-brother, the scientist Michel is played by Robert Hunger-Bühler as a wonderful slow-motion clown. Johan Simons’ production is one long, melancholy joke, a joke about people who seem like primates, a joke we don’t want to laugh at.
P.M.

“Dutch director Johan Simons has succeeded in creating a production of claustrophobic intimacy.” (Stuttgarter Nachrichten)