Contract not illegal
Houllebecq signed the release with the Kirac art collective, whose name stands for Keep It Real Art Critics.
It said: “The participant will be performing as a subject, for usage in artistic, fictional, documentary, performative, essayistic, erotic, pornographic films and Kirac episodes.”
The only restriction, according to the Dutch court documents, was that the best-selling author of Atomised’s face and genitals were not captured in the same shot.
The judge found that while the contract was “far from balanced” and gave the Dutch director extensive rights, it was not illegal.
The evidence was “insufficient to assume that his judgment was impaired by fatigue and alcohol” or depression, the ruling, which ordered the author to pay £1,226 in costs.
“It is incomprehensible why Houellebecq participated in the recordings if he found the agreement really problematic,” the judge said in a written decision.
“Mr Houellebecq is seriously considering an urgent appeal,” the author’s lawyer said after the verdict, which follows a similar defeat in the French courts.
‘A portrait with integrity’
The tobacco-stained bad boy of French letters is frequently tipped to win the Nobel Prize of Literature, despite accusations of misogyny and far-Right, anti-Islamic sympathies.
But even by his provocative standards, the story of his entanglement in the erotic film is eyebrow-raising.
According to the judgment, Qianyum Lysis Li, the writer’s third wife, told Ruitenbeek over dinner in 2022 that the writer wanted to “make a porn film to counter his gloom”.
He filmed Houellebecq having sex with a woman called Jini von Rooijen in Paris. The author and his wife later travelled to Amsterdam to sign the contract for the film in December.
“It has always been my intention to make a portrait with integrity. Hopefully Michel is happy with the result,” Ruitenbeek said after the ruling.
Relations between the novelist and filmmaker deteriorated soon after filming and collapsed after a trailer for the film was released in January, showing a shirtless Houllebecq kissing and fondling a woman in bed.
He was also furious after Ruitenbeek said Houllebecq was “really good in bed” in a February interview with the Vice news website.
In the trailer, Ruitenbeek said Houllebecq contacted him after his honeymoon in Morocco was cancelled over security fears.
He claimed he told him he was depressed because his wife had “spent a month booking prostitutes” for the trip, which was not going ahead.
“I told him I knew plenty of girls in Amsterdam who would have sex with a famous writer out of curiosity, and that I would arrange the hotel for him if I had permission to film everything,” the director said in the trailer.
