THE SENSUALIST (TURK’S FRUIT)

Holland, 1973, 112 minutes, Colour.
Monique van de Ven, Rutger Hauer.
Directed by Paul Verhoeven.

The Sensualist was the Dutch nomination for Oscar for 1973, best foreign language film.

This is a very strong Dutch film, the story of a sculptor, his coming across a photo of the woman he once loved, flashbacks to illustrate the intensity of their passion, physical, psychological, erotic.

The film develops the life of the couple over several years, the love, the clashes, the separation.

Rutger Hauer was a strong Dutch star at this time and was to move to the United States in the late 1970s with such films as Hearts and Armour and then Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone. He made his first big international impact in Blade Runner.

The film was directed by Paul Verhoeven who made a number of films in his native Holland, becoming one of Holland’s leading directors. His significant films include Spetters, Soldier of Orange and The Fourth Man (written by the present screenwriter Gerard Soeteman). After making Flesh and Blood, he had a career for almost twenty years in the United States with such striking and memorable films as: RoboCop, Total Recall and, of course, Basic Instinct. He received ridicule for Showgirls. Starship Troopers became something of a cult science fiction film. He returned to Holland in 2005 to make a film memoir of the Resistance in World War Two, Black Book.

1. Did the title give the appropriate meaning to the film and its themes? The title of the original novel was Turk’s Fruit.

2. Was it evident that this was a Dutch film? Is there a Dutch touch about the film that makes it different from films coming from other countries? If so, where? Is this to its advantage or disadvantage? What was the intention of the initial opening and its impact? How shocking was it meant to be? Did the film intend to shock its audience continually?

3. Why was it shocking? Did this opening shock permeate the whole film? How shocking was the hero in his brutality, sexuality and violence? The murder sequences? Was this in any way alleviated later by the fact that it was
the hero’s imagination rather than reality? Did this make a great difference?

4. Did you like the hero at any time? Did he have any good qualities and strengths? What were his worst qualities? How selfish was he, how brutal? How besotted with sex and violence? His room asn an image of himself? His work and artistic work? His capacity for loving and hating? His reaction to his employers?

5. The banquet and its hypocrisy? The horses eyeing the food? His being sick and destroying the party? His anarchy? Was it a genuine anarchy or was it studied? Was he meant to represent 20th century man? Was he an Everyman figure? Was he the young revolutionary?

6. Did you like the heroine? Her reaction to being picked up? The violence of her sexual rapport with the hero? The importance of the accident? Its effects on their lives?

7. When did the hero begin to change? Was it love for the girl? Their life together? Did she bring out any qualities that he did not know were there? Or was this a normal change in settling down? Did he have any sense of responsibility? Did she?

8. The importance of the heroine’s mother and father? The contrast of values? The generation gap? The possessiveness of the mother and her hypocrisy? The liaison with the manager of the shop? The father and his benevolence? The genial figure? Was he hypocritical at all? What values did the parents stand for?

9. The importance of the wedding sequence? The hypocrisy of the mother? Was this meant to be a comment on the hypocrisy of society and weddings? The genuine love of the father? The effect of the wedding on the hero and heroine? Any effect? The sexuality associated with the wedding both before and after?

10. The hero’s art after the wedding? Its non-conventional nature? His appreciation of his wife? The significance of the Queens coming to open the monument? Their behaviour? Was this genuine or was it studied?

11. When did the heroine begin to change? The effect of the child? What was the effect of the heroine’s erratic behaviour on the hero? why? Was he hurt?

12. The significance of the dinner sequence? The wife flirting with another man? The hypocrisy of the parents? The hero’s being sick over the mother? Emotional response to this?

13. Why did they both go to pieces? Was there anything to hold them together? What was the meaning of this disintegration?

14. The importance of the sequence of the father’s death? The emotional effect on the hero and his genuine sorrow and confrontation with death? Did it have the same effect on the heroine? Why? The effect on the mother?

15. Why the divorce? How did the mother show that she was vindictive and pleased about the divorce? What had gone wrong with the heroine? Did the hero want a divorce or not? why?

16. Did the divorce and all that preceded it explain why the hero went beserk as pictured at the beginning of the film? Was his behaviour then less shocking? why? What of the witfe’s new role? Her mental collapse? The way that the sequence in the cafeteria was handled? What was your emotional response to her behaviour?

17. Was her death sequence too romantic and sentimental? The effect on the hero? Did this fit in with the rest of the film? His final walk on the beach? Its significance? Did this fit in with the rest of the film? His future?

18. The film dealt very much with the physical, the body and its functions - especially its excremental functions. What was the overall impact of this physicality on the audience and its emotional response to this? Did the film have a pessimistic view about bodiliness and sensuality?

19. Was this a successful glimpse of modern realism with old fashioned sentimentality? Or was it a failure? What do you think was the purpose of the film's being made? For what audience? Was it an important film in its physical breakthroughs? Or was it merely a shocker for shock’s sake?