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Turkish Delight
Original film poster
Directed by	Paul Verhoeven
Produced by	Rob Houwer
Written by	Jan Wolkers (novel) Gerard Soeteman
Starring	Monique van de Ven Rutger Hauer
Music by	Rogier van Otterloo
Cinematography	Jan de Bont
Editing by	Jan Bosdriesz
Release date(s)	1973
Running time	112 min.
Country	Netherlands
Language	Dutch
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Turkish Delight (Dutch: Turks fruit) is a 1973 Dutch film directed by Paul Verhoeven and filmed by Jan de Bont. The film is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven. The story is based on the novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers.

Turkish Delight is one of the most successful films of the Dutch cinema. 3,500,000 people visited the film, corresponding to about 27% of the population of the Netherlands at the time.^[1] In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film^[2] and in 1999 it received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century.^[3]

Eric and Olga

Turkish Delight opens with Eric frantically picking up random women from the streets and taking them back to his studio for sex. However, he is clearly distressed about something, and it turns out that this is the aftermath of his breakup with Olga. The movie then recounts his relationship with Olga.

Olga picks up Eric when he is hitchhiking, and immediately they hit it off together, both sexually and spiritually. They live together and marry. However, their relationship is strongly resisted by Olga's mother. She does not approve of this Bohemian sculptor, who lives poorly off his occasional commissions, as a suitable match for Olga.

After a number of adventures, Olga suddenly starts acting strangely. At a party organised by her family, she flirts with a businessman, and after some arguments with Eric, he slaps her and she leaves him. This brings the movie to the point where it opened, ending the flashback.

Eric is still obsessed about Olga, but sees her only occasionally. She acts more and more outrageously, often in the presence of other men. Her family refuses to let Eric visit her, until he says he has come to arrange a divorce.

One day he meets Olga, and she is acting almost completely incoherently. She collapses and is taken to the hospital, where she is diagnosed as having a brain tumor. Eric brings her turkish delight, which is the only thing she will eat, as she is afraid that harder food will break her teeth. Soon after, she dies.

• Monique van der Ven as Olga Stapels
• Rutger Hauer as Eric Vonk
• Tonny Huurdeman as Olga's mother
• Wim van den Brink as Olga's father
• Hans Boskamp as shop manager
• Dolf de Vries as Paul
• Manfred de Graaf as Henny
• Dick Scheffer as accountant
• Marjol Flore as Tineke
• Bert Dijkstra as civil servant

Filming locations included Amsterdam and Alkmaar in the Netherlands.

In 1973 Turkish Delight was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the year in which the French Day for Night won the award.^[2]

In 1999 the film received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century by the Netherlands Film Festival.^[3] Runners-up were another Paul Verhoeven film Soldier of Orange and Academy Award winning film Character.

• Trailer on cinema.nl (Dutch)
• Turks Fruit at the Internet Movie Database
• Turkish Delight at All Movie Guide
• Turkish Delight at Rotten Tomatoes

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