While An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris is fairly unambiguously both my favourite book and the book I have spent the most time thinking about, I haven't actually been great at reading through all of Perec's other works. As such, I both hadn't read this book, nor realized it had been adapted to film. Blessedly, @thricedotted alerted me to the film's existence.
Having watched it, I find myself both brimming with ideas and struck almost speechless. This film fundamentally chafes against what a movie can be. It succeeds in both being the most literal and direct translation of Perec's style and thinking to film and in using the medium of film to do things the written word cannot. As an exploration of depression/alienation/loneliness, I think in the depths of depression I've suffered in the past I would have found this film to be pretentious and would have reacted to it viscerally as an attack. Older, wiser, and in a healthier place, I find it both deeply earnest, and cutting only insomuch as it is laying bare truths.
Structurally, thematically, visually, and sonicly, I think this is a deeply interesting film. I will be thinking about what it does and how it does it for years to come.
Let me leave you with the first sentence of Wikipedia's 'critical reception section':
Un homme qui dort received some critical acclaim among its small audience. There is no entry for it on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.
seconding everything bcj said (and taking them on faith about how Extremely Perec it is). i love when a film is a poem. i love when a film impels you to meditate upon it
