Turkish Delight (1973)

Taglines: This is the indulgence of passion.

Turkish Delight movie storyline. Sort of a cross between Love Story (1970) and an earthy Rembrandt painting, this movie stars Rutger Hauer as gifted Dutch sculptor Eric, who has a stormy, erotic, and star-crossed romance with a beautiful young girl.

The story follows the arc of their relationship and his interaction with her family. Told in flashback form, initially, Eric is seen as a libertine lothario collector, taking trophies from his sexual conquests and pasting them in a book. He sees a sculpture he made of his lost lover and goes into a flashback of his relationship with his wife.

He meets the girl, falls in love with and marries her, and we meet her parents: a charming, well meaning, bumbling father, and his shrew of a wife, who’s convinced Eric is too much of a bohemian to make a good mate for her daughter. Eventually, the petty jealousies, the sexual hijinks, and the climactic vomit scene prove to be too much for the marriage, and Eric and his lady separate. Flash forward several months, and Eric finds the girl back in The Netherlands after an American sojourn. Their reunion is short lived. The somewhat melodramatic ending mirrors Love Story (1970).

Turkish Delight (Dutch: Turks Fruit) is a 1973 Dutch erotic romantic drama film directed by Paul Verhoeven from a screenplay by Gerard Soeteman, based on the 1969 novel Turks Fruit by Jan Wolkers. It is a love story of an artist and a young woman, starring Rutger Hauer in his film debut and Monique van de Ven.

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, while the Netherlands Film Festival puts it at 3.5 million, corresponding to about 26% of the population of the Netherlands at the time.

In 1973 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 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. In 2005, it was adapted into a musical, starring Antonie Kamerling and Jelka van Houten.

Directed by: Paul Verhoeven
Starring: Monique van de Ven, Rutger Hauer, Tonny Huurdeman, Hans Boskamp, Dolf de Vries, Wim van den Brink, Manfred de Graaf, Dick Scheffer, Marjol Flore, Bert Dijkstra
Screenplay by: Gerard Soeteman
Production Design by: Jan André, Roland de Groot
Cinematography by: Jan de Bont
Film Editing by: Jan Bosdriesz
Costume Design by: Mia Houweling
Music by: Rogier van Otterloo
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Nederland Film
Release Date: February 22, 1973