Wat zien ik

The titles already gives something away:(in the dialect from Amsterdam). This is the REAL story about the life of prostitutes in the famous red light district of Amsterdam in the sixties. Based on the book with the same title, it tells about the drama's happening in the life of prostitutes (like the trouble with pimps) and the fun with strange customers... The actors are mainly chosen from commediants and those who have experience in Amsterdam Music Theater, which enables them to give a humorous view on the not to happy lives of prostitutes and using the real accent that people of Amsterdam speak it makes you feel like living next door, able to watch the customers come in and go out every day.

Paul Verhoeven's first feature film after directing the legendary tv-series Floris. Although Verhoeven himself thinks not very highly of his first feature length film, some themes are in fact typical of his work: fear of death and sexuality with a glimpse the social context (e.g. Amsterdam early seventies). Wat Zien Ik also shows us the typical editing technique Paul Verhoeven sometimes uses to hide the lack of story: editing based on speed. In later films this kind of editing proved te be efficient but in this case it's like a bad make up job. Not his best movie...

The man from Holland who made Sharon Stone famous in "Basic Instinct" was in the 70's a well known director from Dutch movies and "Wat zien ik?" is the man's debut. It's a well known fact that Paul doesn't want to be reminded of it, but it exists on celluloid so.... It's one of those typical early sexcomedys for which Holland was famous for but mind you 3 decades later it comes over as laughable.

In this movie we follow the adventures of two hookers who has to obey the weird wishes of their strange clients, but mind you there is absolutely, apart from some (ugly) naked breasts nothing to see so there is no reason to watch it. Perhaps for the humour then? Hmmm it's more embarrassing and an episode from Arnold is more funnier than that so in a short : a movie for the bin!

I'm not really sure what to think about this movie. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly 'the point' of this movie was. It seems like Paul Verhoeven himself also agrees with this; This movie should be forgotten.

For a comedy it simply is not funny enough and for a drama it ain't heavy enough. It's a incoherent mess of sometimes intended funny scene's and intended dramatic one's. Neither style really works out an 100% and the end result is an unpleasant movie to watch that's neither really funny or dramatic.

Also a bit of a problem is the story itself, it's not realistic and highly unlikely all. The actors are quite good, I mean there are some big Dutch names in here but none of the characters are really any good or likable enough.

I always used to think that it was a awesome thing that a distant relative of mine, Henk Molenberg played in a Verhoeven movie. He is even on the cover of the movie. But than I saw the role he played...ha-ha I'm almost embarrassed now, he plays the customer of Greet who loves to clean while wearing pumps and nothing much else and when he doesn't clean good enough he loves to get slapped with a carpet-beater. Yeah weird I know, there are several other weird 'sex-fantasy' scene's like this, with different costumers that are just too odd to find amusing.

The way Amsterdam is filmed is quite good actually and one of the few things that I enjoyed about this movie. The cinematography is from Jan de Bont and one of his assistants is Theo van de Sande, two well known Hollywood names now.

A movie not worth seeing, even not if you're a Verhoeven fan.

4/10

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"Wat Zien Ik" was recently released in Brazil on DVD by a minor distributor as part of a "Trash Collection". I have seen all the movies of Paul Verhoeven since "Turk Fruits", with the exception of "Spetters" , "Voorbij, Voorbij" and "The Hitchhiker", which were not released in Brazil, therefore I decided to buy this DVD. This low budget movie is a comedy about the daily lives of two whores in Red Light District of Amsterdam, and has some funny moments, specially with the weird and bizarre fantasies of their costumers. Ronnie Bierman has a great performance in the role of a kind hearted prostitute, and although original (at least for people from other cultures), the story is also forgettable and only works to satisfy the curiosity about the first films of Paul Verhoeven. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Negócio é Negócio" ("Business is Business")