Black Book has been hailed as director Paul Verhoeven s return to his Dutch roots after a 27-year exile in Hollywood. An exile marked by huge hits like RoboCop, Basic Instinct and Total Recall.
Well, it is and it isn t.
Filmed in the Netherlands, Black Book bears more than a passing resemblance to Soldier of Orange, an early Verhoeven effort about the anti-Nazi resistance movement in his native land.
But it s every bit as slick and exploitative (if not quite as hollow) as many of his American movies. It s less a leap forward in quality than a step sideways.
Our heroine is Rachel (Carice van Houten), a beautiful young woman who as the film begins is hiding in the attic of a Dutch farm family. If her benefactors hate the German occupiers, they re also none too keen on Jews like Rachel. Before each meal she is expected to recite a freshlymemorized passage from the New Testament.
Black Book follows Rachel s metamorphosis from fugitive to Mata Hari. Embittered by the deaths of family members, Rachel joins the resistance and with her hair dyed blond becomes Ellis, a vivacious young stenographer.
She not only lands a job in German headquarters but also becomes the mistress of Muntze (Sebastian Koch of The Lives of Others ), head of the Gestapo in the Netherlands.
Verhoeven and co-writer Gerard Soeteman balance the usual resistance movie elements Rachel/Ellis plants a microphone in Nazi headquarters, a desperate raid is staged to rescue captured members of the underground with some dour observations unlikely to make Dutch hearts throb with pride.
The members of the underground are nearly as anti-Semitic as the Nazis. Moreover, the movement is seething with infighting and betrayals.
The black book of the title is a journal kept by a resistance leader that, after the country s liberation, will reveal just how compromised these freedom fighters had become.
And then there s Muntze, a likable and sensitive man in mourning for the family he lost to Allied bombs. As played by Koch he s not only charismatic, he s humanitarian; having concluded that the war is lost, he tries to keep atrocities to a minimum.
And he loves Ellis, despite his suspicions that she s both a Jew and a spy.
Let s see nice Nazi, racist Dutchmen what more could Verhoeven do to offend?
Glad you asked.
Never averse to making a show of female flesh (this is the man who gave us Showgirls, after all), Verhoeven misses no opportunity to parade his leading lady in various stages of undress.
Some of this seems legitimate a scene in which Rachel dyes her pubic hair to match her new coif is both playful and a solemn reminder of how far she s expected to go to serve her country and protect her true identity.
But late in the film Rachel is accused of being a collaborator, and Verhoeven mixes nudity and scatology in a scene that could be too much for some moviegoers.
If it looks like misogyny and feels like misogyny, maybe it is misogyny.
For the first 90 minutes Black Book is a crackling good thriller. But the film is overlong, with more false endings than Return of the King.
Happily, the performances are spot on. Leading lady van Houten seems game for anything her director throws at her. She exudes a happy sexuality that kept me watching well past the point of losing interest in the plot.
Koch is terrific as her German lover.
Technically Black Book is first-rate, with crisp photography and a sweeping, old-fashioned symphonic score.
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