French writer Michel Houellebecq performs during the show “Existence a Basse Altitude,” a creation around a collection of his poems with music by Romain Poncet, aka Traumer, during the 46th edition of the Printemps de Bourges music festival in Bourges, central France, on April 20, 2022. Houellebecq is seeking a ban on a sexually explicit film awaiting release and featuring the writer, his lawyers said on Feb. 7, 2023. GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP
PARIS—French literary star Michel Houellebecq is seeking a ban on a sexually explicit film awaiting release and featuring the writer, his lawyers said Tuesday, Feb. 7.
The global bestselling author also wants the trailer for the movie, “Kirac 27” by Dutch filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek, taken down, they said.
The trailer, released in January, shows a shirtless Houellebecq kissing a young woman in bed.
It contains an off-camera commentary by Ruitenbeek saying that Houellebecq had written to him saying that his honeymoon in Morocco had been called off after his wife had “spent a month booking prostitutes.”
Houellebecq and his wife, Lysis, “discovered with shock and disgust” that the trailer contained “serious and false statements which violently attacked their dignity,” their lawyers Angelique Beres and Maia Kantor said in a statement.
The couple had launched legal proceedings, “civil and criminal,” to ban the film, scheduled for release in March, and the trailer with its “defamatory” commentary, they said.
They want to “put an end to these attacks immediately” by removing the trailer from all internet platforms and banning the director and his team from showing the film, “or any other images they may have of the Houellebecqs.”
In a message to the director seen by AFP, Houellebecq said that the trailer was an attack on his honor and his personal life and, “worst of all” on his wife, who he said was “devastated by the lies” in the clip.
Ruitenbeek, meanwhile, told the Vice news site last week that the idea to shoot a porn movie had come from Houellebecq and his wife after they had seen “Honeypot,” a previous film by the “Kirac” collective.
“That made them want to do something similar,” he said in an interview with the site, quoting Lysis Houellebecq as telling Ruitenbeek that if he wanted to do something for her husband “you’ll have to turn him into a porn star.”
A first scene was shot the next day with Houellebecq and a young woman called Jini van Rooijen who works with the director and “adores Houellebecq,” Ruitenbeek said.
“It was incredible, they did all kinds of positions,” he said. “He’s very good in bed.”
Shooting went on for six days in Amsterdam in Paris, and also included scenes of Houellebecq discussing philosophy with sexual partners, four in total, and restaurant visits, the director said.
Houellebecq is a controversial writer, and often accused of tapping into right-wing fears over Islam in France.
The Union of Mosques in France told AFP last month it was suing Houellebecq for discrimination, hate speech and inciting violence in remarks to an interviewer.
In 2015, Houellebecq published the international headline-grabbing “Submission” about a Muslim winning the presidency.
He was tipped as a contender for the Nobel Literature Prize last year, although it ultimately went to Annie Ernaux of France who called Houellebecq’s ideas “completely reactionary and anti-feminist.” /ra
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