The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq

Guillaume Nicloux's 2014 film starts not from a real event but from a rumour. In September 2011 the writer Michel Houellebecq briefly disappeared, and claims circulated online that he had been abducted by Al-Qaeda or by aliens. Nicloux chooses to fill that gap: Houellebecq plays himself and is held in a suburban house by three amateur kidnappers. The comedy comes from how ordinary the abduction turns out to be. Instead of ransom negotiations there are meals, wine, cigarettes and conversations about literature, with the kidnappers all but hosting the famous writer. Houellebecq plays with his own public image and neither defends nor dismantles it. The line between documentary and fiction is deliberately left unclear. Who it's for: viewers interested in the French literary world and in hybrid films where real people play themselves. Who it's not for: anyone who does not know who Houellebecq is and will need that knowledge, or who wants a plot.