Synopsis
The Elementary Particles (Elementarteilchen, 2006) is a German drama you can watch online on iFILM. Adapted from Michel Houellebecq's notorious novel, it traces two half-brothers both wrecked by a childhood spent with a hippie mother who cared only about her own affairs.
Michael became a molecular biologist who dreams of engineering a new kind of human; he reads genes far better than people and keeps every feeling at arm's length. Bruno is his opposite — a schoolteacher consumed by sex, burning himself out in brothels and one-night stands. After all that emptiness, each man unexpectedly meets someone who could anchor him: Michael runs into Annabelle, the love of his school years, while Bruno falls for the uninhibited Christiane. Moritz Bleibtreu and Christian Ulmen play the brothers as two poles of a single wound, and Franka Potente and Martina Gedeck bring their stories the warmth the characters have always lacked.
Director Oskar Roehler resists turning Houellebecq into a cold thesis, finding instead a tender film about people who have forgotten how to love and are learning again; Bleibtreu won the Silver Bear at Berlin for his Bruno. Stream The Elementary Particles (2006) online on iFILM.
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