Katie Tippel Reviews

I have always been interested in Paul Verhoeven's work and since I have been living in the Netherlands, I had easy access to his older work, his Dutch movies. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of this one but it was pretty neat to see Paul Verhoeven directing a costume drama for a change (at least, you have to admit he is rather versatile). It was Verhoeven follow-up feature after his breaktrough masterpiece 'Turks fruit' and he worked again with the same actors, Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. Honestly, I thought it was pretty obvious that Paul Verhoeven was not really comfortable with the material. Furthermore, he experienced huge pressure to come up with a worthy follow-up for his critically and commercially successful 'Turks fruit' and he clashed repeatedly with producer Rob Houwer over the screenplay and didn't get the budget to make the film on the epic scale he had intended. He has even been quoted as saying that if he could ever redo one of his movies, it would be this one. So, as usual with Verhoeven, the whole thing is pretty sleazy but I still think it is a well made drama, I really enjoyed it and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Verhoeven's work.