Friday, August 22, 2014

The truths of Houellebecq – The País.com (Spain)

The French writer Michel Houellebecq, while promoting the film about his alleged kidnapping. / Uly Martin

When the reporter asks the question, Michel Houellebecq (Saint-Pierre, Reunion Island, 1958) takes time. Five seconds. Ten. A hesitation. Patience, the writer has a reputation for surly, until the absentee sick. They spend another 20, and the silence of the hotel’s central courtyard becomes deafening. Within 40 seconds the writer returned from that distant mental space in which seems to store responses. The press team film The kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq , fantasizing about his disappearance in 2011 in which he plays himself, breathing relief. Also the journalist. No matter what you answer. Sounds like heaven

In any case, the frightened journalists agree that the writer seems to be in good spirits. His lanky frame, his white skin to transparency, the body that seems to have suffered more than their age would inspire even tenderness. This gentler side corresponds to that shown in what has brought him to his beloved Spain, the premiere on August 29, the film, produced by the Arte and premiered at the Berlinale, a sort of mockumentary about an episode best known for its turbulent history media

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I recognize more in the film than in my novels

“The first literary star from Sartre” (as he defined the Le Nouvel Observateur) had just won the Goncourt prize, the gold medal of the French novel, The map and the territory . His agents were waiting for him to begin a tour of the Netherlands, but the writer did not attend the appointment or answering emails or calls. Alarm, panic. Had he fallen in psychotic depression he suffered in the eighties? Had he gone the globe, as he did in his book the character named Houellebecq? Would have kidnapped Al Qaeda in response to their offenses to Islam, as was rumored in web? Deception: the writer appeared on the third day. Just the phone line from her home in Almería did not work. Or so claimed

What keeps saying, though the film Nicloux of another idea. What if the hypothesis of kidnapping was true? To do this, place the real writer in the midst of a fictional situation. “All that Al Qaeda was very fun and I eventually served as an alibi to show fictional Michel moments that the media has not exposed. It is people that make me laugh, and it seemed a shame that the viewer could not access that part of your personality, “says the director, who had worked with the writer in his TV movie L ‘affaire Gordji (2012). The writer seems to have acquired a taste for acting. In brief film premieres Near death experience (directed by Benoît and Gustave Kervern Délépine), in which trailer you can see dancing rock