Black Book

Brimming with bawdry and smut, Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book” focuses on the sleazier side of World War II. And what guilty, brooding cineaste doesn’t like a little Nazi sex now and then?

Because he poses the odd moral question, Verhoeven’s movie—his first filmed in the Netherlands in over two decades—isn’t entirely worthless. Still, he puts too much of “Showgirls” (his 1995 softcore porn hit) into “Black Book,” and the sex doesn’t quite fit amidst the violence and squalor of the Dutch resistance in WWII. Call me a prude, but when a pretty Jewish girl is steeling herself to seduce an SS commandant, I don’t need to see her give a quickie to a fellow resistance member after waxing her pubic hair.

The private parts Verhoeven willingly parades around onscreen belong to Carice van Houten, who plays Rachel Steinn, alias Ellis de Vries, a dazzling on-the-lam Jew recruited to spy for the resistance. An able temptress and a contemplative soul, she adopts a dour disposition as willingly as she strips for her assigned Nazi boytoy Ludwig Müntze.

Verhoeven, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gerard Soeteman, tries to make de Vries’ relationship a source of ethical tension, but the film overflows with so much sex that the audience almost forgets about the crimes Müntze commits as a high-ranking SS officer.

As Müntze, Sebastian Koch (van Houten’s real-life companion) disarms the audience with his character’s odd humanism and compassion. The latter half of the film is largely a showcase for Koch’s fine acting, although he gives a better performance in the marvelous “The Lives of Others,” which recently won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

It’s early to start divining the honorees for the 2008 awards season, but I’d hazard that if the Academy has any sense, they’ll leave “Black Book” out of the running.

Then again, this film sports the sort of roguish chicanery they often fall for. Movies that feature gorgeous actors removing their clothing, wielding weapons, and displaying moral compunction at the same time offer something for everyone, and Verhoeven knows it.

In one of the most crass scenes in the film, de Vries strips for Müntze, and he appears to get an erection under the sheets. She uncovers him only to find him clothed and wielding a pistol, after which he interrogates her at gunpoint. The examination, however, pains him as much as it scares her.

Why? He loves her, duh!

But all the while, the viewer—at least this viewer, anyway—can’t help but notice that he’s fondling her left breast with his pistol. This scene epitomizes the film—serious moral questions float at the periphery, but at the core, there’s little more than pornography.

Verhoeven wants to stimulate his audience on both intellectual and sexual levels. Unfortunately, he succeeds in doing neither; the grotesquery of using sex to keep viewers engaged while he fashions facile moral dilemmas is all too apparent. Much of the film punts around vague questions: Is it morally acceptable to avenge a death by killing your oppressors? Collaborating with them? Sleeping with them?

The screenplay doesn’t develop these ideas because Verhoeven understands that sex and violence sell better than ethics. His directorial résumé is a testament to this philosophy, as among his hits are “RoboCop,” “Basic Instinct,” “Starship Troopers,” and of course, “Showgirls.” Why has this director, of all directors, shifted from familiar fare—strippers and aliens—to Nazis?

It worked for Roberto Benignini.

—Staff writer Kyle L.K. McAuley can be reached at kmcauley@fas.harvard.edu.