Business is Businss

Business is Business (1971) is Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s very first full-length film, and it would be a discredit to his future work to not acknowledge that this film is largely a middling affair with mere glimpses into his later talent. Taken unto itself, though, this is a typical story about humanizing a prostitute and details the many struggles that one faces when tricking.

Blonde Greet (Ronnie Bierman) is a middle-aged prostitute who earns her fancy abode more through entertaining her clientele’s eccentricities than through any ravishing beauty. Enlisting the aid of her fellow prostitute Nel Muller, who is continually trying to avoid her violently physical live-in pimp, Greet provides the fetishes that these men’s fear alerting their wives to. Yet in the midst of this projected ideal, Greet faces disillusion as the one client she depended on to secure her escape finds himself unable to divorce his wife, fearing any reprehensible damage he might cause her. Thus, the film becomes an ode to decay as Greet comes to realize that this life she chose is in fact interminable, that she cannot simply marry out of it (this theme will be repeated in Verhoeven’s marginally better Katie Tippel).

So if the film details the corroded dreams of a desperate woman, why is that not engaging cinema? The answer lies largely in a script that neglects to consider any of the past history of Greet, which would offer some psychological foundation and provide an entry point into an understanding for her character. As it stands, we understand that she means to help her fellow prostitutes secure a better life for themselves, as she does with Nel, even if that security becomes belittling and monotonous. What Verhoeven does manage is to suggest that that same monotony is prevalent in Greet’s life, and that eventually her body will fail her and that her life will soon wither, since her life is directly linked with the currency of her body.

If you need to see every film about prostitution ever made, you might find something to enjoy here. There is a mild joy in the film’s unbridled carnality, but it’s there in Verhoeven’s stronger work as well, so better to appreciate a better film than this one. Largely, Business is Business suffers from a nondescript approach to the script and a tone that often slights the more serious themes of psychological and spiritual decay.

Business is Business: 4.5/10