Turkish Delight is the most successful film in the history of Dutch cinema. The film was a massive success at the Dutch box office; according to Alle Record, 3,338,000 people saw the film,[1] while the Netherlands Film Festival puts it at 3.5 million,[2] corresponding to about 26% of the population of the Netherlands at the time.[3][4] In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film[5] and in 1999, it received a special Golden Calf Award for Best Dutch Film of the Century. It was entered into the Canon of Dutch Cinema in 2007.[2] In 2005, it was adapted into a musical, starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten.
Plot
Sculptor Eric Vonk wakes up recalling disturbing dreams where he murders characters still unknown to the audience. He eventually cleans up his dingy studio, but only to trawl the streets of Amsterdam in search of random women whom he takes back home for sex. This combination of violent fantasies, promiscuity and occasional misogyny is not intrinsic to him, but rather the outcome of a distressing memory: his failed relationship with Olga Stapels. The film then flashes back two years to the time they first met.
Olga picks up Eric when he is hitchhiking, and they immediately have sex in her car. This first tryst is followed by a traffic accident, and Eric is initially prevented from seeing Olga again by her middle-class mother, who strongly dislikes him and blames him for the crash. However, the two lovers reconnect and start a passionate affair which, while opposed by her mother, is seen sympathetically by her easy-going father. They eventually get married, and Olga's mother and closest circle of friends grudgingly accept Eric.
Sometime later, Eric lands a 5000-guilder commission to prepare a sculpture for the garden of the hospital where his friend Paul works. Olga models for the statue, which is unveiled by the Dutch queen. The unveiling ceremony is successful for the hospital, but the artist and model are prevented from attending on the front line by the queen's security detail because of Olga's revealing dress. Out of frustration, Eric and Olga throw the maquettes into the canals of Amsterdam.
Olga's father dies from illness shortly thereafter. Instead of taking care of the Stapels family business, Eric then takes Olga back to Amsterdam, where he continues his artistic career and she takes a job in a production line. This infuriates Olga's mother, who feels that a Bohemian sculptor earning little from occasional commissions is an unsuitable husband.
Eric and Olga's life together, while initially happy, is marred by bouts of strange behavior by Olga, including unexplainable reveries and rampant impulsivity. This tendency reaches a pitch of conflict at a family gathering in a Chinese restaurant. Eric finds himself insidiously baited into following Olga to the party, where he witnesses her flirting openly with a family friend, with the overt complicity of the rest of the diners. This prompts Eric to vomit over the attendants and slap Olga. She then leaves Eric, who proceeds to trash his studio, destroying anything that reminds him of her. This brings the movie to the point where it opened, ending the flashback.
Eric is still obsessed with Olga. Her family refuses to let him visit her until he says he has come to arrange a divorce. His short stay sours when Olga's mother walks in on them having rough sex, and he is banished from her life permanently. Olga later becomes engaged to a wealthy American and visits Eric to pick up the remainder of her things before leaving for the United States. Eric comes to terms with her departure, and his closure is symbolized by a minor subplot in which he rescues a wounded seagull and sets it free once its wing heals.
Sometime later, Eric walks into a commercial center and spots Olga, flamboyantly dressed and acting oddly. She reveals that her American experience was a disaster and that she is living with her mother again. She suddenly collapses and Eric takes her to Paul's hospital, where she is diagnosed as having a brain tumor. Surgical intervention to remove the tumor is not entirely successful, and her death becomes an inevitable matter of course. Eric brings her a wig and Turkish delight, which is the only thing she will eat, as she fears harder food will break a loose tooth. Soon after, she has a seizure and dies. Eric walks outside, past his sculpture of Olga, and solemnly dumps her wig in a trash disposal.
^Calculated on the basis of historical data on the official Dutch statistics page, CBS - Statistics Netherlands, StatLine: "Population, households and population dynamics from 1899", which provides the figure of 13,388,000 as the total population of the Netherlands in 1973. Accessed 4 April 2016.
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