Paul Verhoeven, aged 83, has been invited to appear on a Dutch TV show called What’s Wrong with Tits? about why sex has become taboo in Hollywood. As the provocateur director of Basic Instinct and Showgirls, Verhoeven knows a thing or two about this. He giggles as he says the show’s title — he has a puerile mind in a head covered by white hair — but he wants to make a serious point.
“Sex is the essence of existence!” he exclaims. “Without it, there are no species any more. So why is that a big secret? There is a new purity.”
He made his new film, Benedetta, in France and Italy to evade what he sees as Hollywood censorship. It is the
