Before moving to the USA to make such controversy-generating works as Robocop, Basic Instinct and Showgirls, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven made a series of similarly provocative films in his home country, and perhaps none more so than this coming-of-age drama set in the outskirts of Rotterdam. Three young working-class men – Rien, Hans and Eef – lead largely dead-end lives but are brought together by their common interests in dirt-bike racing, disco dancing and picking up women. However, the arrival to town of the seductive and strong-willed Fientje (Renée Soutendijk) creates tensions in the group, and each of them are forced to face challenges to their faint dreams of emulating their hero, world champion racer Gerrit Witkamp (Rutger Hauer).

What might sound like a light-hearted adolescence drama in the Breaking Away mould is, inevitably, anything but in the Verhoeven’s hands, who instead presents here a barbed satire of suburban lives, mores and mentalities. With its graphic portrayal of sex and sexual violence, and broaching head-on themes as varied as homophobia, racism, attitudes towards disabilities and the corruption endemic in ‘good’ Christian society, the film managed to offend just about everybody on its initial release, and today remains one of this most infamous of provocateurs’ most challenging and polemical works.

Showing as part of the Cube's season looking back at the work of Elle director Paul Verhoeven.