Gerard Soeteman Movies
Filmmaker Paul Verhoeven returned to the Netherlands after more than twenty years of success in Hollywood to direct this epic-scale war drama based on a true story. Rachel Steinn (Carice van Houten) is a beautiful Jewish woman living in German-occupied Holland during late 1944. Her family members - who have been falsely promised safe passage to Belgium (their names recorded in the 'black book' of the title) are instead robbed and slaughtered by the Germans on a premeditated basis; Rachel herself manages to escape by diving into the water and swimming away. She narrowly avoids capture, then joins the local resistance movement. With her hair dyed blonde, Rachel can easily pass for Aryan, and when the leader of the Dutch resistance movement learns his son has been captured by Axis forces, Rachel is asked to use her feminine charms to persuade a German commander to arrange for the boy's release. Rachel soon finds herself caught up in a dangerous double life as she becomes a sexual plaything for the Nazis while attempting to bring down their evil empire as a spy. Zwartboek was written by Verhoeven and Gerard Soeteman, who collaborated on the 1977 international success Soldier of Orange. Zwartboek received its world premier at the 2006 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, (more)
- 1986
The Dutch-filmed Assault was based on a novel by Harry Mulisch. Presented in a non-linear, flashback/flashword fashion, the film tells the story of a physician whose family was killed by the Nazis during World War II. This came about after the family's neighbors dragged the body of a dead collaborator to their doorstep. The doctor spends his entire adult life trying to find out why his neighbors had betrayed his family. At various isolated moments of political upheaval in Europe, the doctor comes closer and closer to the truth. During a 1984 anti-missile rally, the mystery is solved--and the answer is more complex than anyone back in 1945 had imagined. The hero's "growth" is thus placed in the context of the international turmoil of the four decades following the war. Marc van Uchelen plays the main character as a 12-year-old, while Derek de Lint portrays the adult physician. In a nicely underplayed symbolic touch, Monique van de Ven is cast in a dual role, playing de Lint's wife in the "present" scenes, and an older woman who is murdered by the Nazis because she shelters young van Uchelen in the flashback sequences. The Assault was the "best foreign film" Academy Award winner of 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Derek de Lint, Monique Van de Ven, (more)
When an attempted political coup in Northern Italy fails, most of the mercenaries hired by the coup leaders disperse. Not so Martin (Rutger Hauer), who intends to rob his duplicitous former employer Arnolfini (Fernando Hillbeck). Martin is able to raise his own army by using a stolen religious artifact as a talisman. He later kidnaps Arnolfini's prospective daughter-in-law Agnes (Jennifer Jason Leigh),who saves herself from gang rape by feigning eternal devotion to her captor. Weeks of plunder and destruction follow, with a deadly plague thrown into the stew. Flesh and Blood has also been released under the title The Rose and the Sword. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, (more)
This stylish erotic thriller gained a cult following for its frank treatment of bisexuality, bizarre visuals, and an extremely sexy performance by Renee Soutendijk as a woman who may or may not have killed her three previous husbands. Jeroen Krabbe is terrific as the intended fourth, a broken-down bisexual writer who is pulled into Soutendijk's web like an unsuspecting fly. Bloody and erotic, De Vierde Man will also interest fans of director Paul Verhoeven, who returned to many of the same themes in his smash American hit Basic Instinct. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeroen Krabbé, Renée Soutendijk, (more)
Spetters further elaborates on the themes of sexual obsession previously probed in director Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973). Hans Van Tongeren, Toon Agterberg and Maarten Spanjer play, respectively, Reen, Eve and Hans, a closely-knit group of teenage motorcycle lovers who idolize local cycling champion Witkamp (played by Rutger Hauer, the star of Delight). Unfortunately, the adolescents' attempts to rebel take a dark and brutal turn when Van Tongeren is permanently injured in a road accident and Agterberg is gang raped by a group of homosexuals. While the other two young men lust after Fientje (Renee Soutendjik), a promiscuous hashhouse waitress, Agterberg responds to the rape by coming out and taking Fientje's gay brother as a lover. Verhoeven is artistically and sexually graphic in juxtaposing "cycle love" with the friends' carnal interrelations. The title of Spetters is an indigenous triple-entendre -- it refers to the Dutch vernacular for "grease spatterings" (both the oily renderings left behind by the motorcycles commandeered by the film's central characters and the grease slung by Soutendjik), is a slang term for male ejaculate, and was frequently used in the seventies and eighties to refer to people who are sexually appealing ("That girl is a spetter.")
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hans Van Tongeren, Renée Soutendijk, (more)
- 1979
A famous trial which took place in Ghent is the subject of this courtroom drama, which exposes the activities of an unabashed villain. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Faber, Andre van den Heuvel, (more)
With this fact-based World War II drama and the equally memorable The Fourth Man (1983), Dutch director Paul Verhoeven gained an international following, eventually translating his reputation into Hollywood fame as the director of bloody science fiction spectacles and prurient sex thrillers. Rutger Hauer stars as Erik Lanshof, an aristocratic Dutch student, one of six carefree friends who don't care much for politics. When the Nazis invade Holland, however, the group is drawn inevitably into the conflict. While Alex (Derek de Lint) joins the German army, the suave Gus (Jeroen Krabbe) becomes a resistance leader, eventually escaping with Erik to England, where they become pawns in a much larger underground movement to restore their country's Queen Wilhelmina (Andrea Domburg) to her rightful throne. Based on an autobiographical novel by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Soldaat van Oranje (1978) also features early work by another Dutch master who went on to success as a director of big budget Hollywood films, cinematographer Jan De Bont. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rutger Hauer, Jeroen Krabbé, (more)
- 1976
The exploitation of 19th-century Indonesia by Dutch Colonialists provides the basis of this historical drama that centers on a renegade officer who tries to change the rules. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
This early Paul Verhoeven effort stars Monique van de Ven as a young Dutch hooker in 1881 Amsterdam who struggles to move up the community's social ladder. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Monique Van de Ven
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, All Movie Guide
Controversial director Paul Verhoeven made his feature-film debut with this Dutch comedy-drama about two prostitutes working in the Amsterdam Red Light district, and the many strange and unusual men they meet through their work. Also known as Diary Of A Hooker, Business is Business, and Any Special Way, Wat Zien Ik? was based on the short stories of Albert Mol; the film was photographed by Jan de Bont, who later went on to become a successful director himself. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
