VENICE, Italy -- Paul Verhoeven's World War II drama Black Book is an ambitious throwback to the days of rousing all-action wartime pictures in which an intrepid loner risks everything to fight a clearly defined enemy. It succeeds on almost all fronts. The epic film is a high-octane adventure rooted in fact with a raft of arresting characters, big action sequences and twists and turns galore as a group of Dutch resistance fighters combat the Nazis not knowing they have a traitor at their core.
Top-flight production values and a ripping yarn should mean major boxoffice returns anywhere there is a taste for old-fashioned big-screen entertainment.
Set in German-occupied Holland in 1944, the film follows a young woman named Rachel (Carice van Houten) as she attempts to flee the Nazis with her own and other Jewish families. Having purchased their river passage with all they own, they find the escape is a trap as they are intercepted by the Gestapo and mercilessly mown down.
All except Rachel, who finds her way to a group of resistance fighters run by man named Kuipers (Derek de Lint), who operates a soup kitchen as cover for his sabotage operations. Quickly recruited into the group's inner circle led by daredevil Hans (Thom Hoffman), Rachel demonstrates her bravery and resourcefulness in an encounter on a train with an SS officer named Muntze (Sebastian Koch).
Soon, Rachel is ensconced at the local Gestapo headquarters, sleeping with Muntze and working with a local floozy, Ronnie (Halina Reijn), in the office of a brutal officer named Franken (Waldemar Kopus).
Even though the end of the war is barely months away, the danger increases for the resistance group. When she discovers that there has been a plot involving both Nazis and Dutch in faking escape plans for Jewish families who are murdered and robbed, she finds herself with enemies on all sides.
Director Verhoeven, back on home turf after the Hollywood excesses of Starship Troopers and Showgirls, has fashioned an exciting tale with co-scripter Gerard Soeteman, who developed the original story. Production designer Wilbert Van Dorp and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub have done a great job in creating period detail and capturing fast-moving sequences and intimate moments. Editors Job ter Burg and James Herbert contribute fine work, and Oscar-winning composer Anne Dudley's score complements it all effectively.
Van Houten makes a memorable heroine, a singer as well as a good actress, in what is a very punishing role. Koch and Hoffman do a lot to give their stereotyped roles some originality.
The filmmakers strive hard to root the picture in genuine drama. There are bookends set in Israel that add considerable emotional resonance. While the revelation of the traitor smacks of melodrama, the high adventure is mixed with moments of authentic wartime pathos.
BLACK BOOK
A Fu Works production in association with Egoli Tossell Film, Clockwork Pictures, Studio Babesberg AG, Motion Investment Group, Motel Films and Hector
A VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Screenwriters: Gerard Soeteman, Paul Verhoeven
Producers: San Fu Maltha, Jos van der Linden, Frans van Geste, Jeroen Baker, Teun Hilte, Jens Meurer
Executive producers: Andreas Grosch, Andrea Schmid, Marcus Schofer, Henning Molfenter, Carl Woebcken, Jamie Carmichael, Graham Begg, Sara Giles
Director of photography: Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer: Wilbert van Dorp
Music: Anne Dudley
Editors: Job ter Burg, James Herbert
Cast:
Rachel/Ellis: Carice van Houten
Ludwig Muntze: Sebastian Koch
Hans Akkermans: Thom Hoffman
Ronnie: Halina Reijn
Gunther Franken: Waldemar Kobus
Gerben Kuipers: Derek de Lint
Gen. Kautner: Christian Berkel
Notary Smaal: Dolf de Vries
Van Gein: Peter Blok
Rob: Michiel Huisman
Tim Kuipers: Ronald Armbrust
Kees: Frank Lammers
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 145 minutes...
Top-flight production values and a ripping yarn should mean major boxoffice returns anywhere there is a taste for old-fashioned big-screen entertainment.
Set in German-occupied Holland in 1944, the film follows a young woman named Rachel (Carice van Houten) as she attempts to flee the Nazis with her own and other Jewish families. Having purchased their river passage with all they own, they find the escape is a trap as they are intercepted by the Gestapo and mercilessly mown down.
All except Rachel, who finds her way to a group of resistance fighters run by man named Kuipers (Derek de Lint), who operates a soup kitchen as cover for his sabotage operations. Quickly recruited into the group's inner circle led by daredevil Hans (Thom Hoffman), Rachel demonstrates her bravery and resourcefulness in an encounter on a train with an SS officer named Muntze (Sebastian Koch).
Soon, Rachel is ensconced at the local Gestapo headquarters, sleeping with Muntze and working with a local floozy, Ronnie (Halina Reijn), in the office of a brutal officer named Franken (Waldemar Kopus).
Even though the end of the war is barely months away, the danger increases for the resistance group. When she discovers that there has been a plot involving both Nazis and Dutch in faking escape plans for Jewish families who are murdered and robbed, she finds herself with enemies on all sides.
Director Verhoeven, back on home turf after the Hollywood excesses of Starship Troopers and Showgirls, has fashioned an exciting tale with co-scripter Gerard Soeteman, who developed the original story. Production designer Wilbert Van Dorp and cinematographer Karl Walter Lindenlaub have done a great job in creating period detail and capturing fast-moving sequences and intimate moments. Editors Job ter Burg and James Herbert contribute fine work, and Oscar-winning composer Anne Dudley's score complements it all effectively.
Van Houten makes a memorable heroine, a singer as well as a good actress, in what is a very punishing role. Koch and Hoffman do a lot to give their stereotyped roles some originality.
The filmmakers strive hard to root the picture in genuine drama. There are bookends set in Israel that add considerable emotional resonance. While the revelation of the traitor smacks of melodrama, the high adventure is mixed with moments of authentic wartime pathos.
BLACK BOOK
A Fu Works production in association with Egoli Tossell Film, Clockwork Pictures, Studio Babesberg AG, Motion Investment Group, Motel Films and Hector
A VIP Medienfonds 4 production
Credits:
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Screenwriters: Gerard Soeteman, Paul Verhoeven
Producers: San Fu Maltha, Jos van der Linden, Frans van Geste, Jeroen Baker, Teun Hilte, Jens Meurer
Executive producers: Andreas Grosch, Andrea Schmid, Marcus Schofer, Henning Molfenter, Carl Woebcken, Jamie Carmichael, Graham Begg, Sara Giles
Director of photography: Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Production designer: Wilbert van Dorp
Music: Anne Dudley
Editors: Job ter Burg, James Herbert
Cast:
Rachel/Ellis: Carice van Houten
Ludwig Muntze: Sebastian Koch
Hans Akkermans: Thom Hoffman
Ronnie: Halina Reijn
Gunther Franken: Waldemar Kobus
Gerben Kuipers: Derek de Lint
Gen. Kautner: Christian Berkel
Notary Smaal: Dolf de Vries
Van Gein: Peter Blok
Rob: Michiel Huisman
Tim Kuipers: Ronald Armbrust
Kees: Frank Lammers
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 145 minutes...
CANNES - Unzipped to baffled critics in the final hours of the official competition, Peter Greenaway's first film since the singular "Pillow Book" was pegged by some weary Cannes chroniclers as "unwatchable," but the filmmaker is not easily dismissed, and there are stylistic and thematic concerns to ponder.
But unless one cares to watch veteran British actor John Standing ("Mrs. Dalloway") and Matthew Delamere ("Shadowlands") as clothing-optional father and son business tycoons - who look at and talk a lot about their penises and feelings before rounding up nine females for an unarousing hour of sexual experimentation - "8 1/2 Women" is impenetrable art cinema with no special flourish or logical payoff.
In fact, for a film about sex, "Women" has little of it. In a film that celebrates the sexual fantasies of men everywhere, with archetypal female roles and the cast to pull them off, Greenaway's visual style is crude and predictable. Overall, the film has a patched-together feeling after an intriguing credit sequence.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, but recently taking over several gambling parlors in Kyoto, Japan, Philip Emmenthal (Standing) is still enjoying the unexpected surprises of life but is devastated when his wife dies. His son, Storey (Delamere), is in charge of the family's Japanese interests and has an elaborate solution to his whiny father's loneliness.
Storey and Philip watch Fellini's "8 1/2" and have visions of their own harem. Their subsequent escapades are less a fascinatingly frank adventure of male sexuality as an unwieldy blunder that has mere flashes of the Greenaway magic. The film burdens the viewer with too many characters, but provides too few pleasures to go with the endless banter of father and son.
Led by Vivian Wu as a masculine kind of girl and Polly Walker as a top-of-the-line prostitute reserved for the father but lusted after by the son, the women include an injured horsewoman (Amanda Plummer), a bald nun (Toni Collette), a lusty pachinko addict (Shizuka Inoh), an obsessed Kabuki performer (Kirina Mano) and so on.
One of the "8 " has a large pig for a pet, and poor Plummer is in bandages for most of the movie - some of the offbeat imagery and certain evocative sequences click - but the pacing is deadly uneven and there's a glaring lack of architecture, despite section titles shown over reproductions of script pages in several instances.
8 1/2 WOMEN
Woodline Prods., Movie Masters,
Delux Productions, Continent Films
A Kees Kasander production
Writer-director: Peter Greenaway
Producer: Kees Kasander
Executive producers: Terry Glinwood, Bob Hubar, Denis Wigman
Director of photography: Sacha Vierny
Production designers: Wilbert Van Dorp, Emi Wada
Editor: Elmer Leupen
Costume designer: Emi Wada
Color/stereo
Cast:
Philip Emmenthal: John Standing
Storey Emmenthal: Matthew Delamere
Kito: Vivian Wu
Simato: Shizuka Inoh
Clothilde: Barbara Sarafian
Mio: Kirina Mano
Griselda: Toni Collette
Beryl: Amanda Plummer
Giaconda: Natacha Amal
Giulietta/Half Woman: Manna Fujiwara
Palmira: Polly Walker
Running time - 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
But unless one cares to watch veteran British actor John Standing ("Mrs. Dalloway") and Matthew Delamere ("Shadowlands") as clothing-optional father and son business tycoons - who look at and talk a lot about their penises and feelings before rounding up nine females for an unarousing hour of sexual experimentation - "8 1/2 Women" is impenetrable art cinema with no special flourish or logical payoff.
In fact, for a film about sex, "Women" has little of it. In a film that celebrates the sexual fantasies of men everywhere, with archetypal female roles and the cast to pull them off, Greenaway's visual style is crude and predictable. Overall, the film has a patched-together feeling after an intriguing credit sequence.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, but recently taking over several gambling parlors in Kyoto, Japan, Philip Emmenthal (Standing) is still enjoying the unexpected surprises of life but is devastated when his wife dies. His son, Storey (Delamere), is in charge of the family's Japanese interests and has an elaborate solution to his whiny father's loneliness.
Storey and Philip watch Fellini's "8 1/2" and have visions of their own harem. Their subsequent escapades are less a fascinatingly frank adventure of male sexuality as an unwieldy blunder that has mere flashes of the Greenaway magic. The film burdens the viewer with too many characters, but provides too few pleasures to go with the endless banter of father and son.
Led by Vivian Wu as a masculine kind of girl and Polly Walker as a top-of-the-line prostitute reserved for the father but lusted after by the son, the women include an injured horsewoman (Amanda Plummer), a bald nun (Toni Collette), a lusty pachinko addict (Shizuka Inoh), an obsessed Kabuki performer (Kirina Mano) and so on.
One of the "8 " has a large pig for a pet, and poor Plummer is in bandages for most of the movie - some of the offbeat imagery and certain evocative sequences click - but the pacing is deadly uneven and there's a glaring lack of architecture, despite section titles shown over reproductions of script pages in several instances.
8 1/2 WOMEN
Woodline Prods., Movie Masters,
Delux Productions, Continent Films
A Kees Kasander production
Writer-director: Peter Greenaway
Producer: Kees Kasander
Executive producers: Terry Glinwood, Bob Hubar, Denis Wigman
Director of photography: Sacha Vierny
Production designers: Wilbert Van Dorp, Emi Wada
Editor: Elmer Leupen
Costume designer: Emi Wada
Color/stereo
Cast:
Philip Emmenthal: John Standing
Storey Emmenthal: Matthew Delamere
Kito: Vivian Wu
Simato: Shizuka Inoh
Clothilde: Barbara Sarafian
Mio: Kirina Mano
Griselda: Toni Collette
Beryl: Amanda Plummer
Giaconda: Natacha Amal
Giulietta/Half Woman: Manna Fujiwara
Palmira: Polly Walker
Running time - 120 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 5/28/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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