Turkish Delight

Paul Verhoeven's Turkish Delight (1973) starred Rutger Hauer and Monique Van der Ven as the star-crossed bohemian lovers Eric and Olga, who meet in the Netherlands when Van der Ven stops for the hitch-hiking artist Hauer. Told mostly in flashback, the film explores the charms, whims, and pettiness of new romance, of sexual escapade, of drunken debauchery. Like Keetje Tippel (aka Katie's Passion) (1975), which was set in 19th-century Amsterdam and also starred Hauer and Van der Ven, Turkish Delight seems at first glance like an anacronistic period piece, quite different in form, content, and philosophy from Verhoeven's American films such as RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Showgirls (1995). But, even as such, both films demonstrate the same kind of disconnection to reality and the strange transient nature of life and death. Turkish Delight was not only one of Verhoeven's first features, but one of Hauer's as well, made a decade prior to Blade Runner (1982), Nicolas Roeg's Eureka (1983), and Sam Peckinpah's Osterman Weekend (1983). In between this film and those, Hauer starred in the obscure Mysteries (1978), based on a Knut Hamsun novel about a enigmatic stranger, a suicide, a dwarf, and an ill-fated love triangle. Mysteries co-starred Sylvia Kristel (Emmanuelle) and Rita Tushingham (A Taste of Honey, The Leatherboys). Based on a novel called Turks Fruit by Dutch author and sculptor Jan Hendrik Wolkers (1925-2007), Turkish Delight ended rather melancholically for some tastes, but then again there's not much fun in brain tumors. The dubbed (vhs) versions of both Turkish Delight and Katie Tippel are awful, though the bad sync and cut-rate voiceover artists used in Katie Tippel are kind of funny at the same time.