L'enlèvement de Michel Houellebecq

... you're getting a big surprise. No, seriously--I really don't know what to make of this. Cinema-verite? Fictionalized non-fiction? What the Hell is this supposed to be, anyhow? One thing it is not is interesting. It was waiting for me when I got home--I had pvr'd it--and I sat down to watch Houellebecq shamble and mumble his way through the non-story. He's missing most of his teeth, I guess, that's the only way I can account for his almost incomprehensible speech, and his performance will put you to sleep, guaranteed. His captors, if that's what they are, are no more interesting to watch.

The only saving grace in this mess is Francoise Lebrun, who had played Veronika in La maman et la putain some 40 years before. Her performance was astonishing in Eustache's film, and she manages to bring some class to this one.

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.

Never mind the critical reviews...If you know a little bit about Michel Houllebecq, this is a really funny movie. The guy is clearly, in real life, as annoying and stubborn as the image you get from his novels, though still somehow charming. The ending of this movie is absolutely priceless, but I will not spoil it by revealing it. This movie is for people who are smart enough to value the comedy of Seinfeld and Larry David. And, of course, the comedy of Michel Houllebecq himself.

I think it's hard to be Michel Houellebecq. Perhaps even more difficult to have him as a guest in your home. This fact hits these captors soon. They are having a hard time getting rid of him. The man is abysmally egotistical. Contrived, artificial and perverted in enormous proportions that one must ask whether Michel Houellebecq really exist. The film is from one perspective about the Stockholm syndrome. But very superficially. MH just has to show us all of his unique original misery. As his persona mix of Sartre, Bukowski, Stalin and Baader, which he so diligently cultivate. So now we know that he likes sex, and drinks a lot, palaver on politics and drive fast cars. I sometimes laugh uncontrollably. And I have read more than one of his books. And I must confess - his anti-charisma enhance our magnificent lives in the deluge. Do not let him into your life. Enjoy him at a distance.

This movie was so stultifyingly boring. I laughed a total of three times. Not deep, satisfying, cathartic laughter, but shortlived, mild chuckles. This might have been funnier if it were not fiction, but in a work of fiction, I´d expect some intelligent humor rather than relentless tedium and poking fun at the expense of hackneyed stereotypes. I honestly cannot believe that the screenplay won an award. I myself looked at the minute counter about every ten minutes and had to take breaks to make coffee, run a bath, eat a snack...

The only parts I enjoyed were the Chopin music and the final anti-Europe political diatribe. Otherwise, an utter waste of time and something of a bad joke. My impression is that the director thought that he was creating something ¨ingenious¨. His influence appears to be the Coen brothers, who also have a lot of ¨humor¨ based on what in reality would be rude treatment of other people as stupid philistines. Sometimes the Coen brothers are funny, but not always...

Perhaps this film would be amusing to someone who knew and speculated about the real disappearance of the protagonist in 2011. Is Michel Houellebecq famous? News to me. I only continued watching this thing because it was in French. In the end, I came away with the feeling of having squandered a chunk of my time on bad reality t.v.