Why Patrick Modiano's haven't been made into (successful) films

There's a reason why Patrick Modiano's novels, which seem like mystery stories but are not, have not been (to my knowledge) made into movies: In his novels the "mystery" is one of mood and atmosphere but not of plot and narrative. (Maybe someone like Jim Jarmusch could try to film a PM novel, but good luck w/ that.) As in the latest to make its way into English, Sundays in August (1986): Briefly, the plot involves the narrator (Jean) whose girlfriend (Sylvia), who's in possession of a valuable diamond (the Southern Cross) disappears one night, perhaps kidnapped by the mysterious Anglo-American couple who've befriended the Jean and Sylvia. Who dunnit? What happened? Well, much of that is revealed in the last third of the novel, when the narrator describes how, some 7 years back, he met Sylvia and her thuggish husband (or partner), Villecourt, when he (Jean) was working on a book of photographs about the beaches on rivers outside of Paris. As narrative, this is manipulative and absurd; the narrator reveals the mystery of Sylvia's background to us at the end of the novel, when he knew it all along. Unlike the conventional crime novel or detective novel, we are not discovering things along with the narrator; rather, we are in the dark because the narrator is perverse in what he conceals, what he reveals, and when. Oddly, the novel ends with Sylvia and Jean leaving Villecourt et al., in possession of the diamond, and heading off into a period of hiding (financed just how?) and for a time of idyllic rest (the title becomes the last words of the novel) - a period that ends with the moment at the opening of the novel, 7 years later, when Jean runs into Villecourt in Nice and the period of blissful hiding is about to end. Narrative development aside, the last third of the novel puts us squarely into Modiano-land, as he examines another weird corner of the French landscape, the beach resorts on the Marne River east of Paris. We sense that this was once a thriving resort community, now in neglect and disrepair, as the Marne over time had become increasingly silty, murky, and polluted. (I tried to find some pictures of the old beaches on the Marne; not much comes up aside for hard-to-discern images on old post cards. The present-day Marne looks really developed and it's strange think of it as a waterfront resort - precisely PM's intent.) Also, as in almost all PM novels, the look into the past involves some sort of obscure connection to the French resistance - in this case, an assassination of one of Sylvia's relatives, a probable collaborator - and to the French criminal underworld; both of these, from what I've read about PM's life, are a reference to his father and his wartime activities. In sum, Sundays in August is not the best intro to PM's work, but for those already hooked it gives a different slant (the Nice location, and the Marne River section) on familiar PM themes and settings.

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