Never mind the critical reviews...If you know a little bit about Michel Houllebecq, this is a really funny movie. The guy is clearly, in real life, as annoying and stubborn as the image you get from his novels, though still somehow charming. The ending of this movie is absolutely priceless, but I will not spoil it by revealing it. This movie is for people who are smart enough to value the comedy of Seinfeld and Larry David. And, of course, the comedy of Michel Houllebecq himself.

... you're getting a big surprise. No, seriously--I really don't know what to make of this. Cinema-verite? Fictionalized non-fiction? What the Hell is this supposed to be, anyhow? One thing it is not is interesting. It was waiting for me when I got home--I had pvr'd it--and I sat down to watch Houellebecq shamble and mumble his way through the non-story. He's missing most of his teeth, I guess, that's the only way I can account for his almost incomprehensible speech, and his performance will put you to sleep, guaranteed. His captors, if that's what they are, are no more interesting to watch.The only saving grace in this mess is Francoise Lebrun, who had played Veronika in La maman et la putain some 40 years before. Her performance was astonishing in Eustache's film, and she manages to bring some class to this one.

I liked the film, I found it captivating in spite of or perhaps because of Michel's appearance as of late-what happened to his upper front teeth? More important: why hasn't had some bridgework done? Is he making some kind of point by completely distorting his appearance, purposely trying to look like an old bum. Catch the scene where he is trying to talk and eat a sandwich, it's not an easy scene to watch. The funniest scene is where they are trying to teach him free fighting. And the end is very strange. So ten lines minimum ? Check out the review elsewhere on this page-I just can't get past the fact that his appearance has so radically changed, as if he is saying "f-ck appearances, i just don't care anymore, and you shouldn't either". But what about the females? Has he given that up as well?

The premise of this film sounded so interesting: author Michel Houellebecq plays himself, and attempts to explain a period in 2011 when he went missing for several days, by creating a fictionalised kidnapping. The premise is amusingly twisted, and I was intrigued to see what they'd do with it.Unfortunately, what they do with it is incredibly banal. Houellebecq gets kidnapped, is rather tame and pleasant to his captors, who are tame and pleasant in return, and then it's over.It's meant to be a comedy, I suppose. There's something very surreal about the whole thing, quite apart from the conceit of the film. Every scene is so humdrum that it clashes against the situation the author is in. Houellebecq is calm to the point of boredom, as though it's every day he gets held to ransom. We follow pointless conversations about H. P. Lovecraft's saliva-soaked pillow and whether or not the author can have a lighter for his cigarettes please. One slightly interesting sequence involves his captors teaching Houellebecq some MMA techniques to stave off their own boredom, but it's only a pale glow in an otherwise grey fog.Boredom is the watchword of this film, and as much as it tries to extract humour from just how mundane it is, it just ends up being incredibly tedious to watch. In addition, at a level above merely watching it, there's something superficially narcissistic about Houellebecq's portrayal of himself—I know that as an author he's supposed to be controversial, but I didn't really care enough about the film to really get engaged—at an academic level I thought it was incredibly shallow.So this ended up one of those films that I hated through boredom rather than through the type of active hatred that can often be the result of something truly provocative. It was most of all a pointless film, and one that I'm afraid to say I wish I'd not bothered seeing.