(Paris) The French novelist Michel Houellebecq will publish on May 24 an account of his setbacks with a Dutch filmmaker who had hired him as an actor for a pornographic film, Flammarion editions announced on Wednesday.
The 112-page book will be titled A few months in my life, October 2022-March 2023says the publisher.
“For the first time in my life, I felt treated, absolutely, like the subject of a wildlife documentary; it’s hard for me to forget that moment,” explains Michel Houellebecq on the back cover.
In November 2022, the author of The map and the territory (Goncourt Prize 2010) signed a contract with a director, Stefan Ruitenbeek, for a pornographic film.
Two versions are opposed as to the course of the shooting, in Paris and Amsterdam in December. According to Mr. Ruitenbeek, this one went very well and should make for a good film. Mr. Houellebecq on the contrary accuses the director of having trapped him when he wanted not to be recognizable.
The writer has already told his version of the facts in an open letter to Mr. Ruitenbeek published on his website, in documents sent to the French and Dutch courts in an attempt to ban the film, and in forums published by various titles of the press in Europe like the Corriere della sera Or El País.
The Paris court, considering itself incompetent, and the summary judge of the Amsterdam court, for whom the contract was lawful and was respected, both dismissed Mr. Houellebecq’s request to have the film banned.
A trailer for this film titled Kirac 27 (named after the Dutch artistic collective Kirac behind the project) was published on the internet in March, then withdrawn.
Michel Houellebecq is a very influential French writer, recognized for his quality of observation of the individualistic excesses of Western societies. But it is also controversial because of positions deemed racist and Islamophobic.
His latest book is the novel Annihilate published in January 2022.