The 112-page book will be titled A Few Months in My Life, October 2022-March 2023. The 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, announced Wednesday the editions Flammarion. The back cover will say: "For the first time in my life I felt treated, absolutely, like the object of a wildlife documentary; It's hard for me to forget that moment."
In November 2022, the author of La Carte et le Territoire (Prix Goncourt 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 Stefan Ruitenbeek, it went very well and should make a good film. Michel Houellebecq accuses the director of having trapped him when he wanted not to be recognizable.
The trailer of the film released... then withdrawn
The writer has already told his side of the story in an open letter to Stefan Ruitenbeek published on his website, in documents sent to the French and Dutch courts to try to ban the film, and in forums published by various press titles in Europe such as Corriere della sera or El País . The Paris Judicial Court, considering itself incompetent, and the judge of the Amsterdam court, for which the contract was lawful and was respected, both rejected Michel Houellebecq's request to have the film banned. A trailer for the film titled Kirac 27 (named after the Dutch art collective Kirac behind the project) was released on the internet in March and later removed.
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 Anéantir published in January 2022.
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