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Herald Rating: * *
Cast: Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Running time: 145 mins Rating: R16, violence, offensive language and content may offend
Screening: Academy, Rialto Hamilton
Verdict: Paul Verhoeven's first Dutch film in 25 years is lurid and tasteless.
Expecting subtlety from Paul Verhoeven, the enfant terrible Dutch export behind Basic Instinct, would really be the triumph of hope over experience. But this World War II drama, Verhoeven's first film at home since 1983, beguiles by seeming at first to be the story of a Jewish woman getting one over on the Nazis. Faint hope. This is the Holocaust as soft-porn soap opera in which the heroine's major task is to be at least topless and, when possible, completely naked.
In occupied Holland in 1944, Rachel (van Houten) is hiding out when her house is bombed and she ends up working for the Resistance seducing local Gestapo head (Koch) to winkle secrets out of him. To do so she must dye her hair blonde. Verhoeven allows no doubt that this means all her hair, but that is the least of the indignities he will visit on her; the climax involves putting her under a torrent of human faeces, a process for which, natch, she is topless).
For all its impeccable production values, it has the narrative subtlety of a war comic. Bookend scenes in Israel showing an elderly Rachel hint at some noble intent; Rachel was, after all, Jacob's wife and the mother of Israel. But it's hard to imagine her deriving much pleasure from this.
