de Volkskrant — “I was utterly stupid”

“I was utterly stupid”: how Houellebecq ended up in the Dutch sex film he wants banned

The row surrounding writer Michel Houellebecq, who wants a sex film in which he stars banned, is one in a long series of controversies. How did he become so entangled in a game he usually plays with such sophistication?

Ariejan Korteweg and Eline Huisman · 14 March 2023, 13:45

French writer Michel Houellebecq wants to have the Dutch film featuring explicit footage in which he plays a leading role banned. Now that the request has failed in a Paris court, the battleground is moving to Amsterdam. Today, a Dutch judge is considering the dispute between Houellebecq and artist Stefan Ruitenbeek of the KIRAC collective, known for controversial projects, who produced the film. The ruling will follow in two weeks.

Houellebecq and his wife, Qianyun Lysis Li, watched the trailer with “stupefaction and horror” when it appeared online at the end of January. It has since been taken down. As the writer lies in bed kissing a young woman, the voice-over promises what the film will show: curious fans sleeping with the famous writer while the camera records everything. Furious about the “irreparable damage” to their private life, the couple tried to secure a ban on the trailer and the film in France.

Now that this has failed, the writer is directing his challenge before the Amsterdam court not at the film itself but at the contract signed for the filming. According to Jacqueline Schaap, his Dutch lawyer, the contract is so unreasonable that it contravenes the law. Houellebecq would have no say whatsoever over the use of the footage. Moreover, Schaap says, the writer was under the influence of antidepressants and alcohol when he signed it.

The film was due to premiere on 11 March at the Betty Asfalt Complex in Amsterdam, a day after the publication of Vernietigen, the Dutch translation of Houellebecq’s latest novel, Anéantir. The premiere has been postponed for now. Ruitenbeek says he still hopes to reach an agreement with Houellebecq. According to Houellebecq’s lawyer, the writer has pressed for a settlement, but negotiations are making little headway.

Missing for a while

The work of French writer Michel Houellebecq often seems to inhabit the twilight zone between fiction and reality. Terrorist attacks, farmers’ uprisings, the rise of the far right, tourism as the countryside’s last salvation: he wrote about them before they became apparent to everyone.

He also seeks out that boundary in films. In 2013, Houellebecq went missing for a while. Although he was supposed to give all sorts of talks and interviews, nobody knew where he was. Director Guillaume Nicloux used that premise to make a feature film, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, in which the writer turns out to have been abducted by a gang. Houellebecq plays himself and drives the other lead actors, some with criminal pasts, to despair by repeatedly asking for cigarettes. For the film, the actors were put together for a month without a fully detailed script, after which the best scenes were used. Houellebecq was pleased with the result.

That method somewhat resembles what Dutch filmmaker Stefan Ruitenbeek had in mind. With his organisation KIRAC, Keeping It Real Art Critics, he has been making videos since 2016, published on its own platform, in which art-world figures play prominent roles. Those people are often placed in compromising situations. The films sometimes cause uproar because their protagonists regret participating or feel they have been lied to.

Controversial figures

The latter applied to Sid Lukkassen, a young philosopher associated with Forum for Democracy. He responded to an appeal by Amsterdam student Jini van Rooijen on GeenStijl to find right-wing men for her graduation project who wanted to “fuck her left-wing pussy”. Ruitenbeek filmed their encounter, initially with Lukkassen’s consent. At a certain point he regrets it and says: “I don’t want you to use this footage.” He withdrew his participation, yet that scene nevertheless appears in Honeypot, along with other footage of their encounter.

Ruitenbeek likes seeking out controversial figures. The Hague-based artist Julian A. recently took part in a KIRAC spectacle too. A. is being prosecuted following several complaints of violence and sexual abuse. KIRAC’s work often carries a sexual charge. But Ruitenbeek initially approached Houellebecq with a proposal for a joint art project in Amsterdam.

Like KIRAC, Houellebecq displays an interest in all kinds of sexual activities in his work, and both use provocation as a stylistic device. In Annihilation — incidentally, an unusually gentle book in Houellebecq’s oeuvre in which sex otherwise plays scarcely any role — the protagonist has paid sex with a student who, unbeknown to him, turns out to be his own niece.

In November, Ruitenbeek went to Paris accompanied by Jini van Rooijen, who had appeared in the film with Lukkassen. They met Houellebecq and Qianyun Li, his wife since 2018. Ruitenbeek had sent some films beforehand. The writer is said to have seen at least Honeypot. “I wasn’t sitting next to them when they watched,” says Ruitenbeek. “But he told me he had watched it all the way through.” Houellebecq himself says he watched with only half an eye. Sex scenes were filmed in Paris, with Houellebecq’s wife also present, and arrangements were made for a follow-up in Amsterdam, where, according to Ruitenbeek, young women were yearning to have sex with the famous writer.

“Including sexual acts”

From that point, the accounts begin to diverge. When the writer and his wife went to Amsterdam on 21 December, they were met at the station by a team from Ruitenbeek with a camera rolling. That much is certain. Houellebecq did not appreciate it: according to the writer, neither he nor his wife had been asked for permission. Moreover, the director had allegedly promised the couple anonymity at their request by keeping their faces unrecognisable on screen. In an open letter to the director published on his own website, Houellebecq writes that he regrets not throwing the camera into the first canal he came across. According to Ruitenbeek, however, they knew about it. “His wife even said she had dressed up for the occasion.”

That evening, a contract was signed in the Houellebecqs’ hotel room, with which the writer probably surrendered himself body and soul to Ruitenbeek and KIRAC. The contract, obtained by de Volkskrant, states that Ruitenbeek may use any footage of Houellebecq and his wife he can get his hands on, that Houellebecq is participating in the project free of charge, has no say whatsoever, may not see the film in advance, and that all revenue goes to Ruitenbeek.

It also specifies that the Houellebecqs would participate in a film “including sexual acts and genitals”, although these could not be shown in the same frame as the recognisable faces of Houellebecq and Li. So much for anonymity: the contract allows recognisable faces in footage showing “caressing, cuddling, physical intimacy and kissing”.

An unreasonable contract

“I have never read such an unreasonable and bad contract,” says lawyer Schaap. Houellebecq signed it without advice from his entourage. “None of his agents seemed to know about this,” confirms French journalist Sophie des Déserts, who spoke extensively to the writer’s family, friends and advisers for a profile in the French newspaper Libération. “If he had discussed this with those around him, they would certainly have discouraged him.” Schaap confirms that.

In the days after the contract was signed, attempts were made to film sex scenes. Very successfully, according to the director; nothing happened, according to the writer. Ruitenbeek told the French edition of Vice that Houellebecq shared a bed with four women — a lie, the writer says. As was the story in the trailer, in which Ruitenbeek’s voice-over describes a cancelled trip to Morocco for which Li had “spent a month arranging the prostitutes in advance from Paris”. Houellebecq has no objection to an explicit film as such, his lawyer says, but he does object to “a film in which falsehoods are presented as truths over which he has no further control”.

Has his contract with Ruitenbeek entangled Houellebecq in a game he usually plays so skilfully himself? “That is the question,” says journalist Des Déserts. “Houellebecq provokes, manipulates and plays with the boundaries between reality and fiction. Suddenly he has met someone who works the same way. It is a little as though he has been injured by his own fireworks. What Houellebecq imagined this project would be remains a mystery. But he probably foresaw neither the scale of this scandal nor Ruitenbeek’s inflexibility.”

In France, the trailer was seen as yet another stunt by a writer who has made provocation his trademark. A few weeks earlier, it had been Muslims’ turn again: in an interview with Front populaire, Houellebecq called the far-right conspiracy theory about population replacement a fact and said that what native French people primarily wanted was for Muslims to stop “robbing and attacking” them. Afterwards, Houellebecq said he had not been aware of hurting the Muslim community. Des Déserts places both issues in the context of Anéantir’s disappointing sales and the Nobel Prize he hoped for but did not receive. “His latest book is gentler, less Islam and sexuality, and it hasn’t had the success of his previous novels. And suddenly there are these scandalous remarks about Muslims and a pornographic film.”

Pure sadness

Ruitenbeek told Vice in early February that Houellebecq was unhappy and depressed when they met, and that this shocked him. Yet he does not consider that a reason to abandon the film now. “We are both artists, we had an agreement, and other people are involved. You can’t just withdraw. My admiration for him remains. I would have liked to talk. Who knows, he might find the film better than he expects.”

Martin de Haan, who is in regular contact with Houellebecq as his usual Dutch translator, is unhappy with how things have unfolded. “At a moment like this, you want all the attention to go to the novel’s Dutch edition. That moment is now being hijacked by this affair. I’m giving four talks in the Netherlands this week and already know that many questions will be about this.” According to Ruitenbeek, the coincidence of those dates is accidental. “The book was originally supposed to come out earlier.”

“It is pure sadness,” says De Haan. “Houellebecq brings this on himself with all his clumsiness. He is incredibly intelligent, but also impulsive and impractical.” He asked the writer outright: haven’t you been naïve? Houellebecq’s answer: “J’étais con” — I was utterly stupid.