Michel Houellebecq plays a version of himself in Guillaume Nicloux’s satirical black comedy
CinéSalon: THE KIDNAPPING OF MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ (L’ENLÈVEMENT DE MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ) (Guillaume Nicloux, 2014)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, May 10, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through May 31
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org
In 2010, French writer, actor, poet, and filmmaker Michel Houellebecq won the prestigious Prix Goncourt for his novel The Map and the Territory. The controversial Houellebecq — who has been accused of plagiarism, misogyny, and inciting racial hatred — then went missing in 2011, failing to show up for a book tour in Belgium and the Netherlands. As it turns out, the novelist merely forgot about the readings and claims he was unreachable at the time, by either phone or e-mail. But writer-director Guillaume Nicloux tells a far more entertaining story in the absurdist black comedy The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq, which imagines that he really was taken hostage and held for a never-specified ransom. Even better, Nicloux got Houellebecq to play himself in the film, spoofing his image as an intellectual recluse. The fictionalized Houellebecq is taken captive by Mathieu (Mathieu Nicourt), Max (Maxime Lefrançois), and Luc (Luc Schwarz), who eventually bring him to a country house owned by elderly couple Ginette (Ginette Suchotzky) and Dede (Andre Suchotzky), where Houellebecq is almost always handcuffed and chained to his bed at night. His kidnappers engage him in literary discussions, talk about bodybuilding, bring him books to read, drink wine and smoke cigarettes with him, and even procure female accompaniment (Marie Bourjala) when he asks for it. The real Houellebecq (Platform; H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life) plays his fictionalized self with a deadpan comic turn worthy of Buster Keaton, never letting on whether anything that is happening is even the slightest bit true to who Houellebecq actually is. Nicloux (The Nun, Valley of Love) keeps the audience guessing all the way about the characters and their motives, but don’t expect any simple answers or trite resolutions. The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq is screening May 10 at 4:00 and 7:30 in FIAF’s “Creative Encounters” CinéSalon series, with the later show introduced by Albertine Books deputy director Tom Roberge, who has admitted to his “slavish devotion to Michel Houellebecq.” The festival continues every Tuesday in May with Michel Gondry’s Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, Claire Denis’s Jacques Rivette, the Night Watchman, and Chantal Akerman’s One Day Pina Asked…
“Girls ruin everything,” Bob (John Lescault) tells Jim (Zack Ryan) in Joseph Graham’s Beautiful Something, the follow-up to his 2010 film, Strapped. During one long dark night of the soul, several gay men cruise the streets of Philadelphia, looking for love in all the wrong places as their stories intertwine. Poet Brian (Brian Sheppard) seeks out onetime lover Dan (Grant Lancaster), who was the inspiration for his book of poetry, titled Strapped, only to find out he has gone straight. Jim (Zack Ryan) is growing bored with being famous sculptor Drew’s (Colman Domingo) muse and wants something more. The married Chris (David Melissaratos) goes to a gay bar for the first time, unable to resist his urges. Big-time talent agent Bob (John Lescault) trolls the neighborhood in his white stretch limo, searching for very specific accompaniment. And Sergio (Matthew Rios) rides around on his bike, attempting to score in more ways than one. Despite some tender, heartfelt moments, Beautiful Something, which is based on actual events, doesn’t quite hits its mark, as underdeveloped characters keep doing self-destructive things in an unspecified time. Graham wants to invite us into these intimate situations, but we’re kept at a frustrating distance as the individual tales go just slightly awry. Cinematographer Matthew Boyd, who also shot Strapped, gives Beautiful Something a sharp look, but the characters’ aimlessness grows tiresome, even if that is part of the point.
In a 1966 interview with Pierre Daix about Masculin feminin, director Jean-Luc Godard said, “When I made this film, I didn’t have the least idea of what I wanted.” Initially to be based on the Guy de Maupassant short stories “The Signal” and “Paul’s Mistress,” the film ended up being a revolutionary examination of the emerging youth culture in France, which Godard identifies as “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Godard threw away the script and worked on the fly to make the film, which stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a peculiar young man who quickly becomes obsessed with budding pop star Madeleine, played by real-life Yé-yé singer Chantal Goya. (Godard discovered her on a television variety show.) Paul chases Madeleine, getting a job at the same company, going to the movies and nightclubs with her and her friends, and meeting her in cafés, where he wants to talk about the troubles of contemporary society and she just wants to have a good time. “Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience,” Paul proclaims. He continually argues that there is nothing going on even as strange events occur around him to which he is completely oblivious, including a lover’s spat in which a woman guns down a man in broad daylight. (Sounds of rapid-fire bullets can be heard over the intertitles for each of the film’s fifteen faits précis, evoking a sense of impending doom.) Paul has bizarre conversations with his best friend, Robert (Michel Debord), a radical who asks him to help put up anarchist posters. Posing as a journalist, Paul brutally interviews Miss 19 (Elsa Leroy), a young model with a very different view of society and politics. Godard has also included a playful battle of the sexes in the center of it all: Paul wants Madeleine, much to the consternation of Madeleine’s roommate, Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert), who also has designs on her; meanwhile, Robert goes out with another of Madeleine’s friends, the more grounded Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport), who is interested in Paul. It all makes for great fun, taking place in a surreal black-and-white world dominated by rampant consumerism.
