Review of Business Is Business (1971) by Stuart K — 19 Jun 2012

Paul Verhoeven's directorial debut, after a decade of making documentaries and working for Dutch television, he got into films when he and his screenwriter Gerard Soeteman adapted two books by Dutch author Albert Mol, Wat zien ik!? and Haar van Boven, for the big screen.

It's a bawdy, naughty sex comedy, which predates the antics the British would do in the Confessions films a few years later. Set in Amsterdam's red light district, this tells the exploits and goings-on of two prostitutes, Greet (Ronnie Bierman) and Nel (Sylvia de Leur), who live in a house on the Prinsengracht.

Greet entertains her clients by performing their most depraved sexual fantasies, from her dressing up like a witch, to S&M with one client dressed up as a cleaner and one doing a chicken role-play with feathers.

Nel lives upstairs with Sjaak (Jules Hamel), who sponges off Nel's money, and they seem to fight all the time, and after one particularly violent fight. Greet decides to help Nel find another man, who they find in the timid Bob (Bernhard Droog), but Sjaak is having non of that.

Right from his first film, Verhoeven was feet first in with sex, and it's been in just about every film he's made since then. But, he has a wicked sense of humour, and that's been in his films ever since too.

For a low-budget film, it's well shot by Jan de Bont, who later became a director, with good colour and well framed shots. The best was to come from Verhoeven in the following years.