Turkish Delight

Turkish Delight
Original film poster
Directed by	Paul Verhoeven
Produced by	Rob Houwer
Written by	Jan Wolkers (novel) Gerard Soeteman
Starring	Monique van de Ven Rutger Hauer
Music by	Rogier van Otterloo
Cinematography	Jan de Bont
Editing by	Jan Bosdriesz
Release date(s)	1973
Running time	112 min.
Country	Netherlands
Language	Dutch
Budget	€ 365,000

Turkish Delight (Dutch: Turks fruit) is a 1973 Dutch film directed by Paul Verhoeven and filmed by Jan de Bont. The film is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. The story is based on the novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers.

Turkish Delight is one of the most successful films of the Dutch cinema. 3,500,000 people saw the film, corresponding to about 27% of the population of the Netherlands at the time.^[1] In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film^[2] and in 1999 it received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century.^[3]

Plot

Eric and Olga

Turkish Delight introduces Eric waking up recalling a disturbing dream followed by frantically picking up random women from the streets and taking them back to his studio for sex. However, he is clearly distressed about something, and it turns out that this is the aftermath of his breakup with Olga. The movie then recounts his relationship with Olga.

Olga picks up Eric when he is hitchhiking, and immediately they hit it off together, both sexually and spiritually. They live together and marry. However, their relationship is strongly resisted by Olga's mother. She does not approve of this Bohemian sculptor, who lives poorly off his occasional commissions, as a suitable match for Olga. Nevertheless, Eric and Olga get married and Olga's family accepts him.

After a number of adventures, Olga suddenly starts acting strangely. At a party organised by her family, she flirts with a businessman, and after some arguments with Eric, he slaps her and she leaves him. Eric trashes his studio, violently crushing anything that reminded him of Olga. This brings the movie to the point where it opened, ending the flashback.

Eric is still obsessed about Olga, but sees her only occasionally. She acts more and more outrageously, often in the presence of other men. Her family refuses to let Eric visit her, until he says he has come to arrange a divorce. After a short while Olga gets married to an American businessman which soon goes wrong and Olga moves back to the Netherlands.

One day he meets Olga, who is flamboyantly dressed and acting almost completely incoherent. She collapses and is taken to the hospital, where she is diagnosed as having a brain tumor, but surgical intervention could not remove all of it. It becomes clear that she will die. Eric brings her turkish delight, which is the only thing she will eat, as she is afraid that harder food will break her teeth. Soon after, she dies.

Cast

• Monique van de Ven as Olga Stapels
• Rutger Hauer as Eric Vonk
• Tonny Huurdeman as Olga's mother
• Wim van den Brink as Olga's father
• Hans Boskamp as shop manager
• Dolf de Vries as Paul
• Manfred de Graaf as Henny
• Dick Scheffer as accountant
• Marjol Flore as Tineke
• Bert Dijkstra as civil servant

Background

Filming locations included Amsterdam and Alkmaar in the Netherlands.

In 1973 Turkish Delight was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the year in which the French Day for Night won the award.^[2]

In 1999 the film received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century by the Netherlands Film Festival.^[3] Runners-up were another Paul Verhoeven film Soldier of Orange and Academy Award winning film Character.

External links

• Trailer on cinema.nl (Dutch)
• Turks Fruit at the Internet Movie Database
• Turkish Delight at Allmovie
• Turkish Delight at Rotten Tomatoes

References

v • d • e Cinema of the Netherlands Films A–Z • Films by year: Pre 1920 • 1920s • 1930s • 1940s • 1950s • 1960s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s Actors • Directors • Cinematographers • Composers • Editors • Producers • Screenwriters