Paul Verhoeven's Little BLACK BOOK
Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch master of action (ROBOCOP) and erotic thrillers (BASIC INSTINCT), returned to the Netherlands to make a WWII action-adventure movie. BLACK BOOK won't be out till early March, but it's already been hailed as his best movie in twenty years. (It's a Golden Globe nominee and a likely nominee for a foreign language film Academy Award) The heroine, a Dutch/Jewish chanteuse (Carice Van Houten, in a riotously unself-conscious performance) avenges her families' betrayal at the hands of WWII collaborators. Joining the resistance, she finds love, lies and brutality on both sides.
"It's a much more personal story for me than the films I made in the US," Verhoeven tells the UK Telegraph. "It has the resonance of youth. I was seven years old when the war ended, and the emotional resonance of being occupied is something you take with you your whole life."