The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (2014)

The author Michel Houellebecq is abducted by three amateur kidnappers.

Director:

Guillaume Nicloux

Writer:

Guillaume Nicloux

Stars:

Michel Houellebecq, Mathieu Nicourt, Maxime Lefrançois

1 win & 4 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Michel Houellebecq	...	Michel Houellebecq
Mathieu Nicourt	...	Mathieu
Maxime Lefrançois	...	Max
Françoise Lebrun	...	Françoise
Luc Schwarz	...	Luc
Veran Mauberret
Ginette Suchotzky	...	Ginette
André Suchotzky	...	Dédé
Marie Bourjala	...	Fatima
Karim Achoui	...	L'avocat
François Samuelson	...	François
Vincent Janerot
Béatrice Mendy
Marie Schwarz
Ian Turiak	...	L'ouvrier polonais

Storyline

The author Michel Houellebecq is abducted by three amateur kidnappers.

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Plot Keywords:

wine drinking | cigarette smoking | kidnapping | writer | abduction | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French Polish

Release Date:

25 March 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq

Box Office

Gross USA:

$11,546

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$107,641

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films du Worso

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

None of the people in the movie are real actors; they are all being themselves. The movie did have a scenario, but not a script, which means that all of the dialogues are real conversations. Director Guillaume Nicloux sometimes did give a few actors a couple of lines to steer the conversation.

User Reviews

A comedy of boredom

The premise of this film sounded so interesting: author Michel Houellebecq plays himself, and attempts to explain a period in 2011 when he went missing for several days, by creating a fictionalised kidnapping. The premise is amusingly twisted, and I was intrigued to see what they'd do with it.

Unfortunately, what they do with it is incredibly banal. Houellebecq gets kidnapped, is rather tame and pleasant to his captors, who are tame and pleasant in return, and then it's over.

It's meant to be a comedy, I suppose. There's something very surreal about the whole thing, quite apart from the conceit of the film. Every scene is so humdrum that it clashes against the situation the author is in. Houellebecq is calm to the point of boredom, as though it's every day he gets held to ransom. We follow pointless conversations about H. P. Lovecraft's saliva-soaked pillow and whether or not the author can have a lighter for his cigarettes please. One slightly interesting sequence involves his captors teaching Houellebecq some MMA techniques to stave off their own boredom, but it's only a pale glow in an otherwise grey fog.

Boredom is the watchword of this film, and as much as it tries to extract humour from just how mundane it is, it just ends up being incredibly tedious to watch. In addition, at a level above merely watching it, there's something superficially narcissistic about Houellebecq's portrayal of himself—I know that as an author he's supposed to be controversial, but I didn't really care enough about the film to really get engaged—at an academic level I thought it was incredibly shallow.

So this ended up one of those films that I hated through boredom rather than through the type of active hatred that can often be the result of something truly provocative. It was most of all a pointless film, and one that I'm afraid to say I wish I'd not bothered seeing.