Black Book - 2006 - Paul Verhoeveen

Carice van Houten plays Rachel, a Jewish singer doing whatever it takes to survive in occupied Netherlands during World War II. After being bombed out of her hiding place and barely surviving an attempt to flee, Rachel joins the Dutch resistance and takes the name Ellis. While helping with a plan to bug the Gestapo headquarters, she meets an SS commander named Muntze. In order to help save some hostages, Ellis begins a relationship with Muntze.

Paul Verhoeven is either a mad man or a genius and depending on the film, maybe both. Black Book(Zwartboek) is my first experience with Verhoeven in a language other than English on purpose. His American films are all entertaining, but they are campy and for the most part have nightmarishly bad acting. Carice van Houten is wonderful as Ellis and the rest of the cast is very good as well. Of course this is a Paul Verhoeven movie so there are a few things that you can count on. Sex scenes are all somewhere between awkward and gratuitous and the violence is turned up a notch or two from reality. Pacing is surprisingly tight for a film that runs almost two and a half hours. For me the only real flaw was that the film is ninety percent flashback and that midigates the stakes to some extent.
8/10