Country: Holland
Genre: Comedy
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Year: 1971
Rating: 
TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE
It’s amazing to think that with his first film, Paul Verhoeven’s essential characteristics as a filmmaker (and those of his main screenwriter over the years, Gerard Soeteman) were already in evidence.
Business Is Business is punchy. The tone is frank (some would say vulgar). Verhoeven and Soeteman get straight to the point. The filmmakers go out of their way to be nonjudgmental. Even back then, Verhoeven’s action scenes were zestfully performed and edited. The film is brightly lit, even cheery. And as always, Verhoeven’s manic energy pushes the film along. Even now, 40 years later, the pacing seems brisk.
Business Is Business concerns the daily work and personal lives of Greet (Ronnie Bierman) and Nel (Sylvia de Leur), two hookers that live in the same building. We observe them as they entertain various clients. They actually do very little vanilla sex. Most of their clients are fetishists of one kind or another. These scenes are very funny.
Although the social condemnation of prostitution is not as heavy as in the United States (it’s legal in Holland), still the girls are looked down on. And business may be business, but the prostitutes are human beings. They fall in love, get pregnant and so on.
The filmmakers make no bones about the low class of their subjects. Unlike movies made about prostitution in the United States, the filmmakers don’t cast their film with airbrushed models. These women look coarse and used. But even though Verhoeven might be honest in his depiction, neither is he cruel. He has compassion both for the women and their clients.
Business Is Business is a remarkably pleasant movie about the business of prostitution and the people who work in it. For those who appreciate Paul Verhoeven’s films (not the thumpingly obvious Showgirls and Basic Instinct but rather Starship Troopers, Black Book, Robocop, Total Recall, Spetters, The 4th Man, Soldier Of Orange, and Flesh+Blood), I heartily recommend checking out the film with which he started his career.
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