Turkish Delight (1973) Reviews

In Paul Verhoeven's sexual psychodrama Turkish Delight -- an adaptation of Jan Wolkers' best-selling erotic novel -- Rutger Hauer (Soldier of Orange) is Eric, an Amsterdam artist whose paintings and sculptures are all perverse. He spends his days wandering around the city and picking up young female lovers -- whom he beds and then tosses aside mercilessly -- and keeps an extensive scrapbook of mementos from his bedmates. Eric is deeply haunted, however, by a dysfunctional past relationship. He only fell in love on one occasion: with Olga (Verhoeven regular Monique Van de Ven), a mentally unstable woman dying of a brain tumor. The film received a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination in 1973 and became one of the most lucrative motion pictures ever generated by the Dutch film industry. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi