Zwartboek [Black Book]
(directed by Paul Verhoeven)
Oh, that slippery Paul Verhoeven. He's not content to just schlock it up a'la Showgirls or Starship Troopers. He has to go ahead and make an amalgam of half serious art film and big budget war drama called Black Book. And it's actually very, very good. The radiant Carice Van Houten plays a Jewish woman whose entire family has been offed on their way to freedom. She joins the Dutch resistance and in the process, also seduces an SS Untersturmfuhrer (sorry, it's just really fun to write) played by the excellent Sebastian Koch from The Lives of Others. They make with the hanky-panky as she tries to get information to help the resistance, but she also happens to fall in love with the charming, sensitive Nazi. Nothing is as it seems in Black Book, and Verhoeven seems to relish playing with convention, a refreshing change from other WWII films of recent years.
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