I’m afraid I’ve been very mixed-up about this Holocaust business. Until I watched Paul Verhoeven’s new film, I was unaware, for example, that a young Dutch Jewess might have had the time of her life during World War II if only she had the good sense to dye her pubic hair blonde and shack up with Nazi officer. Rewriting history as a kinky Mata Hari penny-dreadful, Black Book is a lively spy caper that might well have been conceived by Benny Hill and played out in fast motion to the strains of the William Tell overture. Carice van Houten stars as the racy young Jewish filly who escapes a massacre, joins the underground, goes undercover as a mistress for a kindly (I kid you not) Nazi, falls in love, makes several daring escapes, thwarts a plan to steal Jewish gold, foils evil collaborators and ultimately lives happily ever after in Israel. Phew.
The plot is certainly swashbuckling enough. I half-expected a fight between a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus towards the denouement. But for all its eventfulness, Black Book sabotages any sense of jeopardy with a script that will always provide its protagonist with a shotgun, should she require one. When our girl is injected with a lethal dose of insulin you can be sure she received an enormous chocolate bar five minutes earlier so she can eat her way to glory. If she needs an escape tunnel, she’s bound to find one in the Ladies. And so on.
Such clumsy devices might be excusable if the film was not quite so sleazy. Here, the war is reduced to an endless parade of breasts being squeezed, skirts being hoisted and suspenders being snapped. Even ‘Allo ‘Allo delivered similar material in a more dignified, realistic fashion.
And just when you think he couldn’t possibly demean women any further, the director covers his naked heroine in a bucket of shit. Classy enough to make you yearn for the relatively empowering interrogation scene from Basic Instinct. Yuk.