Turkish Delight (1973)

11 out of 12 people found the following review helpful:

Turkish Delight - this certainly is! 4StarMust.

Pete Shuttleworth from Hemel Hempstead, Herts, 19th November, 2004

You can't call this film a movie. It is a 100% a film. Based on the best selling autobiography 'Turkish Fruit' we witness an unconventional Dutch love story, set in the 1970s, unfold. The setting, rather dated now, makes it all the more stand out as a timeless piece. I admit I was shocked by the opening, though realised what the director was up to, and I admit I became keen to see what panned out for the two central characters - the scupltor and his muse. This film is definately worth watching. It is! There are several plot twists which keep you thinking and I suggest you look beyond the plastic (the stiff sub-titles, the late 70s fashion, the injured bird metaphor) and get to see the real core of this film. A true and universal love story from a blokes point of view. You know... the guy from BladeRunner can act, and in the buff, after all. It's no wonder Turkish Fruit sells well in Holland!

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4 out of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Dutch Love Story

Jamie Rush from Stockport, England, 17th January, 2005

Verhoeven's sex-heavy take on 'Love Story' is a passionate and engaging picture, though it may not be to everybody's taste. Those familiar with Verhoeven's no-holds-barred approach may be pleased to note this film has sex & nudity by the barrel, though it is no porn flick. This is a real warts 'n' all depiction of an intense but ultimately doomed relationship. Verhoeven made this film with the intention of delivering a real shock to the prevalent middle-class Catholic attitudes of Holland at the time, as personified through Rutger Hauer's disapproving in-laws. A real taboo-breaker in the 70's, it's impact has inevitably lessened through age. Nontheless, this is still potent, powerful viewing that underlines what a wasted talent Hauer has become in Hollywood. n.b. this film should definitely not be viewed before dinner!

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4 out of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Turkish Delight

SAI81 from from Tonbridge, 7th August, 2005

Terrific right up until its last 20 minutes when it becomes a completely different film and falls apart in the process. Paul Verhoven makes a real impression with this, his second film as a director. He garners great performances from Rutger Hauer and Monique Van De Ven in the central roles as an unbalanced sculptor and his new wife and muse. It's unmistakably and unrepentantly a Paul Verhoven movie, packed to the gills with sex and nudity (Van De Ven seems to spend the majority of her screen time with at least half her body exposed) and featuring some rather nasty violence a couple of times. Add to this a couple of shots you'd only ever find in a Verhoven film (a woman's water breaking at her wedding and a dog getting up to lick it off the seat leaps to mind) and you've an original talent clearly setting out his stall. It's a shame that the fun, flighty, atmosphere get jettosined at the end of the film but for 80 minutes this is great entertainment.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Turkish Delight

MarieLondon from , 22nd May, 2009

Nicely shot artistic film, but the story is dull.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Shocking but poignant

A Customer from Billericay, 12th March, 2009

I am still in two minds about this film. Some of the scenes were unnecessarily vulgar and there was very little exploration of the psyche of the tortured artitstic genius which might have explained his behaviour and enabled the viewer to have more empathy with the central character. In my view this would have given the film more balance. However, the core story of the film - the tragic love affair with his muse - was really poignant and moving. I think if you can rise above the vulgarity, this is a film worth watching.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Turkish - I don't think so

A Customer from Taunton, 2nd January, 2009

It's a good job Rutger is in this very dated film as he's the only one worth watching. What it has to do with Turkish Delight is beyond me. A neat story but not exactly delightful. In fact it's rather sad.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

*** May contain spoilers ***

Romance and faeces

Savage from from London, England, 15th April, 2008

The most successful film in Holland's history and voted the best Dutch film ever in 1999,Verhoeven's characteristically unshackled movie is a delirious romance dressed up as a scabrous, scatalogical satire on bourgeois values. Rutger Hauer is the passionate artist who embarks on a tempestuos relationship with the daughter of a pair of middle-class shopkeepers - much to her mother's horror. The picture opens with scenes of ultraviolence and full-on sex, and settles down after that to run the full gamut of faeces, urine and vomit. Verhoeven loves his bodily secretions, and he makes sure we share the passion, too - because that's what life and love is, and, along with the ever-present maggots, it's all that left when we're gone. And stay with it to the very end: when Hauer misses his love's last breath, it's very nearly heart-breaking. Not that the director would necessarily want that fact to get around; he loves all the dirt and disgust too much to go for the emotions - that's what he wants you to think.

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