Michel Houellebecq and cinema: an original passion

The publication of “In the Skin of Blanche Houellebecq” highlights Michel Houellebecq’s connections to cinema.

Michel Houellebecq is very visual in his writing, sensitive to the zeitgeist and is sometimes identified, rightly or wrongly, with a contemporary Balzac. Would he be seen as an actor, director or screenwriter in around twenty films and try to test the saying that cinema was born from the meeting of a novel and a painting on an editing table?

Michel Houellebecq, who came from the cinema before becoming a writer, is clearly a lover of the seventh art, which reflects him well. And his participation in “In the Skin of Blanche Houellebecq” by Guillaume Nicloux is another act in this relationship between the writer and the cinema.

The roots of the passion for cinema

After Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Houellebecq is undoubtedly the author who has the most connections to cinema as an author, screenwriter, director and actor. Their worlds have nothing to do with each other, but the relationship between fiction and cinema brings them together. Another thing they have in common: their interest in fantasy. Robbe-Grillet with his films Last year in Marienbad (1961) or I love you I love you (1968) and Houellebecq with his admiration for the American author Howard Philips Lovecraft, to whom he dedicated an excellent essay, his first published book.

Michel Houellebecq, director of three short films and one feature film, actor in eleven films, screenwriter in many others, regularly brings cinema into his novels: excursions, meetings, posters, screenings, film references… accompany his work from afar. Aware that novelistic and cinematic writing are different, he produced his own adaptation of his novel The possibility of an island In the cinema. The film starring Benoît Magimel, which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, was panned by critics.

Director before becoming a writer

But Michel Houellebecq’s first foray into cinema dates back to 1978, with the production of the short film (30 minutes). crystal of suffering, written, directed and starring Michel Houellebecq, difficult to see today. So the novelist is first a director before he becomes a novelist. After this first attempt at cinema, the adaptation of his first novel followed Expansion of the wrestling area (1994) by Philippe Harel was published in 1999. Michel Houellebecq is already a literary phenomenon and it was undoubtedly a blessing for the film fan that he is to see his novel come to life on the screen five years after its publication.

But it is his collaboration with Guillaume Nicloux, the director of The kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq Broadcast on Arte in 2014, in which the novelist can be seen as an actor. A mood film about the time, around the small-footed kidnapping of the writer who finds himself in the house of a retired couple, and captures an atmosphere and a zeitgeist that are specific to those we perceive in his novels.

A cinematic face

Philippe Harel’s film shows a silhouette and a “face” that cinema loves. Michel Houellebecq’s aura as a writer is at once recognizable, transparent and very idiosyncratic and has developed into a highly sought-after media personality. Then the author plays the main role Near death experience (2014) by Gustave Kerven and Benoît Delépine, where he is an employee who quits after burnout and flees to the mountains on his bike.

Michel Houellebecq, also a musician, is alongside Iggy Pop in the documentary dedicated to the rock star. Stay alive method. He then performed Saint Amour (2016), still directed by Kerven and Delépine, starring Gérard Depardieu, Benoît Poelvoorde and Vincent Lacoste. In 2019 he reunited with Guillaume Nicloux, who directed the film Thalasso, where Houellebecq stars alongside Gérard Depardieux, with both playing their own roles. The film follows The kidnapping of Michel Houellebecqand resembles the beach chronicle of the two media phenomena rebelling against the establishment’s dry regime.

Loyal directors

The directors are loyal to Michel Houellebecq, as are Gustave Kerven and Benoît Delépine, who give him the role of a suicidal client Clear storywhere he meets Blanche Gardin before finding her today In the shoes of Blanche Houellebecq. Wouldn’t the author have become a luxury cameo over the course of his appearances, invited to say hello as if he were part of the outfit of his loyal directors? But the author does not allow himself to be restricted. Houellebecq identifies with his “unconventional” image and plays where you least expect him, such as: Rumba, life (2022), a comedy by Franck Dubosc in which he is a doctor. His novel was published in the same year elementary particles (1998) East adapted for television, but he does not participate in it, neither as a writer/adapter nor as an actor.

But he is really where we expect him to be in Guillaume Nicloux’s new film, in which he appears for the third time In the shoes of Blanche Houellebecq. The director finds Michel Houellebecq in a jumble of banal and unlikely situations in which he still plays his own role. It is surprising to see this identification of the writer with the actor, between the solitude of writing and exhibition in the cinema, in the interpretation of “himself”, the writer, while he originally aspired to be a filmmaker. His name even appears in the titles of the films in which he plays the lead role. Houellebecq has become a fictional character. A twist of fate worthy of a novel.