The film is about the customers and personal lives of Greet and Nel, two female prostitutes in Amsterdam. Greet and Nel are friends and live on different floors of the same canal house at the Prinsengracht. In this house they also receive customers.
Sexual fantasies
Greet roleplays the customers' sexual fantasies. These incidents are recounted in the form of anecdotes throughout the film. The roleplaying involves Greet being a wicked witch, a schoolteacher, a feathered chicken, a corpse, a woman commanding her cleaner, and a surgeon. Sometimes Nel assists her by playing a part in the roleplaying.
Nel and Sjaak
Nel lives with Sjaak, a guy who likes fishing and who lives on Nel's money. Nel and Sjaak are continuously fighting. Greet convinces Nel to respond to a personal ad. The following blind date in a restaurant ends up in throwing cakes. Nel wants to clean her dress and then she meets Bob and they fall in love. In another fight Sjaak almost kills Nel with a knife and Nel decides to move in with Bob in Eindhoven. Bob turns out to be boring, and Nel visits Greet in Amsterdam. Nel doesn't want to work as a prostitute anymore, and she turns out to be pregnant. Nel and Bob marry in Amsterdam, and all of Nel's former colleagues pretend that she worked as a seamstress.
Greet and Piet
Greet meets the married man Piet in the bar where she hangs out. Piet takes her to a striptease club, and they have sex afterwards at her house. Unlike the other men, he doesn't have to pay. Piet brings Greet a bouquet of red roses. The next time they meet, they create a romantic atmosphere and Piet stays over night with Greet. Later, Piet takes Greet to a classical concert. She dislikes it and makes a scene in the concert hall. When Piet finds out his wife is pregnant he stops seeing Greet. In the end of the film they meet again and Greet says he should name his child "Greet" if it is a girl. The film ends when Greet makes the customer that plays the cleaner clean up Nel's marriage party.
Business Is Business was director Paul Verhoeven's first feature film as well as the first film of cinematographerJan de Bont. Gerard Soeteman wrote the film scenario, which was his first feature film script. He based the story on the two books Wat zien ik!? and Haar van Boven written by Albert Mol. Writer Albert Mol also has a small role in the film himself as Mr. Van Schaveren. The opening scene is shot at the airport Schiphol. Many scenes in the film are shot in the city of Amsterdam, most in the canal house, in the red-light district, and at the canals.
Reception
The film had 2,358,946 admissions in the Netherlands being one of the most popular Dutch films in 1971 and surpassing Gone With the Wind and The Sound of Music and returning the distributor $1.3 million.
