Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight is a 1973 Dutch erotic romantic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a screenplay by Gerard Soeteman, based on the 1969 novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers. It is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer in his film debut and Monique van de Ven. Turkish Delight is the most successful film in the history of Dutch cinema. The film was a massive success at the Dutch box office; according to Alle Record, 3,338,000 people saw the film, while the Netherlands Film Festival puts it at 3.5 million, corresponding to about 26% of the population of the Netherlands at the time. In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and in 1999, it received a special Golden Calf Award for Best Dutch Film of the Century. It was entered into the Canon of Dutch Cinema in 2007. In 2005, it was adapted into a musical, starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten. Plot Sculptor Eric Vonk wakes up recalling disturbing dreams where he murders characters still unknown to the audience. He eventually cleans up his dingy studio, but only to trawl the streets of Amsterdam in search of random women whom he takes back home for sex. This combination of violent fantasies, promiscuity and occasional misogyny is not intrinsic to him, but rather the outcome of a distressing memory: his failed relationship with Olga Stapels. The film then flashes back two years to the time they first met. Olga picks Eric up when he is hitchhiking, and they immediately have sex in her car. This first tryst is followed by a traffic accident, and Eric is initially prevented from seeing Olga again by her middle-class mother, who strongly dislikes him and blames him for the crash. However, the two lovers reconnect and start a passionate affair which, while opposed by her mother, is seen sympathetically by her easy-going father. They eventually get married, and Olga's mother and closest circle of friends grudgingly accept Eric.