The famous French author Michel Houellebecq has lost another court case against the Dutch art collective KIRAC.
KIRAC makes a sex film starring Houellebecq, but the writer no longer agrees to release the images. The court in Amsterdam did not agree with the controversial writer.
The author previously went to a French court, but it ruled that the film KIRAC 27 did not violate his privacy. Houellebecq had to pay a small compensation to filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek.
Honeymoon cancelled
Houellebecq wanted the film, labeled as porn by some media outlets, banned after seeing its trailer. The trailer shows the writer as he kisses a young woman shirtless in bed. Based on that trailer, he called the film “defamatory” and “an explosion of violence.” In the trailer, Ruitenbeek says that Houellebecq had written to him that his honeymoon to Morocco had been canceled for fear of a kidnapping by Muslim extremists, while his wife had spent a month “arranging the prostitutes from Paris”.
In the Amsterdam case, the writer then argued that the contract that KIRAC concluded with him was not sufficient. For example, he was depressed at the time of signing and, according to him, it was in the middle of the night when the contract was signed in a drunken state. But according to the judge, it is “incomprehensible why Houellebecq did participate in the recordings if he found the agreement really problematic”. According to the judge, there was also “enough time between the conclusion of the contract and the start of the shooting of the film to return to the content of the agreement and, if that did not lead to a solution, to decide to refuse to cooperate”.
‘A portrait of integrity’
Through lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, KIRAC announces that it is the intention “to make an art film in which it is not always clear what is fact and fiction. For example, it would be unclear to the viewer whether it is really Houellebecq who is having sex.” Filmmaker Ruitenbeek says he is “relieved” about the verdict. “It has always been my intention to make a portrait of integrity. Hopefully Michel can agree with the result.” KIRAC previously said that the release of the entire film, originally scheduled for March 11, has been delayed due to the lawsuits.
Houellebecq published the novels in the Netherlands, among others Subject , Elementary Particles and, recently, Destroy .