Indeed, the woman is a Jew and a spy, but seduction wins her improbable favors from her Gestapo lover in Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's war thriller "Black Book" ("Zwartboek" in Dutch -- beware, or rejoice: this film is subtitled). Considering Verhoeven took a 20-year hiatus from Dutch cinema to direct "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls," among other graphic Hollywood films, the prominent role of sex in his latest is not surprising.
But while the guise of a war espionage thriller can't entirely conceal the lurid nudity soap beneath, admittedly, this is an entertaining spy story that breezes through its nearly two-and-a-half hours with verve and intrigue. This film is sexy, and not only because of all the sex.
Rising Dutch star Carice van Houten is the young Jewish woman, Rachel Stein, a former singer who must adopt the alias Ellis de Vries after her asylum from the Nazis is compromised. Because of her apparent cunning, she is readily taken in by a group of Dutch resistance fighters and charged with bedding Nazi officers for inside intelligence. Ellis succeeds in obtaining enemy information but also falls for the Gestapo agent she seduces (Sebastian Koch, last seen as the lead in the brilliant "The Lives of Others"). Koch and van Houten have an erotic on-screen chemistry -- which makes sense, since they're an off-screen couple too.
Too bad eroticism and carnage don't sustain self-styled important films. The film's other failings, too, cheapen the whole affair. Cast in incredibly vivid color, "Black Book" is like the "Moulin Rouge" of WWII flicks -- too garish-looking to be taken with much seriousness. What's more, the film's twists of plot and turns of loyalty defy credibility with their breakneck speed. Before the plot settles in, the film's heroine has already escaped death by SS massacre one too many times, along the way shuffling through throwaway allies who kinda sorta help her out before getting killed themselves. Add one or two more rapid-fire, sensationalist escapes, and "Black Book" would be "The Pianist" on crack.
"Black Book" can afford those overdone effects, at least financially. Apparently the most expensive Dutch movie ever made, "Black Book" features plenty of lavish scenery changes and trigger-happy clashes. I'm also assuming a significant chunk of the budget went towards van Houten's platinum hair bleach, for both head and nether regions, the latter of which, yes, is shown in the film.
Despite all its faults, however, the film makes an intriguing case about moral relativism that embroils nearly every character -- a muddled sense of which side and which ideology is right. Interestingly, the most arguably sympathetic character, in the end, is a Nazi, and many alleged good guys turn out to be duplicitous rogues.
And so this becomes one of two warring impulses -- the poignant moral complexes of each character versus Verhoeven's melodramatic indulgences -- and their clash nearly sinks the film.
Van Houten's quasi-femme fatale rescues "Black Book" from pulp mayhem. A shamelessly beguiling vamp when she wants to be -- that is, when necessary for the cause of the resistance -- and a perfectly doe-eyed lady at other times, Ellis is one of the more intricately written heroines of recent memory. Van Houten's note-perfect performance captures the balance of no-nonsense charm and shrewd trickery so well that throughout it's hard to tell whether she might actually wind up a Nazi collaborator. Think Greta Garbo or Jean Harlow, to mention two sirens of the silent screen directly referenced in this movie.
Sizzling with van Houten's electric presence, "Black Book" works in spite of the oversexed whims of its director -- even in spite of its hurried and overstuffed plot. Verhoeven tests boundaries of tastefulness, yes, but it's Verhoeven. What else did we expect?
