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The fault, of course, was the wine. The always controversial Michel Houellebecq, 67 years old and still enfant terrible of contemporary French literature, has failed in his attempt to stop the dissemination of a film in which he appears having sex with several women. An Amsterdam court has dismissed the author's claim and the film is expected to be released in May.

Houellebecq alleged that, at the time of signing the contract, he was "deeply depressed" and had drunk several glasses of red. Apparently, the idea of him starring in an experimental porn film to "counteract his melancholy" came to Qianyum Lysis, his wife. At a dinner in Paris last fall, Lysis asked Dutch filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek to make his plan a reality.

Ruitenbeek is, along with Kate Sinha and Tarik Sadouma, one of the architects of the group KIRAC (Keeping It Real Art Critics), which since 2016 publishes short films on YouTube that explore and mock the international art world, often mixing real and fictional elements in ways that are difficult to separate.

That is, it occurs to the wife of the most controversial of European writers that her almost septuagenarian husband stars in a more or less pornographic film directed, in addition, by a group equally prone to scandal. What could go wrong?

Michel Houellebecq at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2015GTRES

Perhaps there came a time when the couple saw the filmed images. Call it ageism, but the ravages of time are what they are and Houellebecq was never an Apollo. The fact is that the couple filed a lawsuit to prohibit the distribution of the film for violating their privacy. First in France, where it was already rejected a few weeks ago, and then in Holland, where it has suffered the same fate.

The writer's first partner in the sex scenes was a 22-year-old philosophy student named Jini van Rooijen, a leftist and model for OnlyFans. Ruitenbeek, in an interview with Vice, describes the encounter and, despite the dispute with the writer, expresses enormous admiration for his qualities as a lover: "He has a lot of energy. On the first day he slept with Jini at his home in Paris. It was amazing. We recorded a multitude of postures: fellatio, cunnilingus. In real life, Houellebecq is a seducer. He is very good in bed, fucks like crazy. He is very virile with women. He thought he was going to run in three minutes, but he fucked for hours. He's a real guy."

The idea for the film, he insists, came from Lysis, the wife: "We had to collaborate on a different project, but she said that Michel was too depressed to discuss it because the only thing that made him happy was sleeping with many women, but that it was increasingly difficult to find them because groupies were scarce and he does not like to pay prostitutes. "

Initially, Houellebecq and Ruitenbeek planned to carry out "a work of art in which the distinction between fiction and reality takes the form of play with the rancorous paranoia of enemies." Upon arriving in Amsterdam for filming, on December 1, 2022, the writer signed a release form, agreeing to appear in a film that "may or may not include explicit content." The only restriction of the agreement was that the film would not show Houellebecq and his genitals in the same shot.

Author Michel Houellebecq at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2019GTRES

According to the Dutch court ruling, the separation of the images of faces and genitals "would leave the viewer with the doubt of whether Houellebecq really participates in the sex scenes or if, on the contrary, he is a double acting in his place."

However, on December 23, three days before the end of filming, the writer left the project. In a letter published on his website, he claimed that his "conceptions of artistic work" and those of Ruitenebeek were "radically opposed", comparing Ruitenebeek's methods to "sewer journalism".

In his complaint to the Amsterdam court, Houellebecq argued that he was struggling with severe depression at the time of the agreement and that he had drunk several glasses of wine. The judge rejected his objection to the lack of a medical certificate proving his state of health and questioned whether he drank the wine before and not after signing.

Houellebecq's porn has become, therefore, the latest scandal of the writer, accustomed to being in the eye of the storm for controversies such as his defense of prostitution or his criticism of Muslim immigrants who "attack and steal". Unless, of course, everything is an elaborate publicity stunt.

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