Film is so much about that intensity of focus that there always needs to be some tension and some forward motion. The novel goes into a series of lovely observations about the world, but you've got to find the story.
People who don't quite fit society, they are often kind of either under an awful lot of pressure or otherwise not acceptable to the mainstream and that tells us a lot about who we are. The people that don't fit are a great way of reflecting on all of us.
There should always be that leeway because if you think of your character as sort of absolutely fixed, then you just try and find actors to come and do exactly that thing, then you're not gonna be working with that actor's own set of internal impulses and who they are, so the best work is always a coming together of the actor and the character.
