The Vanishing (1988 film)
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| The Vanishing | |
|---|---|
 Original film poster |
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| Directed by | George Sluizer |
| Produced by | Anne Lordon George Sluizer |
| Written by | Tim Krabbé George Sluizer |
| Starring | Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu Gene Bervoets |
| Release date(s) |  October 27, 1988 December 20, 1989 1990 |
| Running time | 107 min. |
| Language | English French Dutch |
| Budget | ƒ 250,000 ($165,000) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Vanishing (Dutch: Spoorloos) is a film directed by George Sluizer; Sluizer also produced the film with Anne Lordon. The film is based on the novel The Golden Egg by Tim Krabbé. It was released in 1988 and is in French and Dutch. Sluizer later remade the film in English, but the remake was poorly received.
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[edit] Synopsis
A Dutch couple, Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia Wagter (Johanna ter Steege), are on a cycling holiday in France. Their car runs out of gas and they are stranded inside a tunnel. They quarrel for a while, but make up and eventually get going again.
Later they stop at a gas station. Here Saskia goes into the shop for drinks and never returns. Rex waits, getting more worried and nervous by the minute as Saskia does not emerge. He soon starts to question people if they have seen her, but no one has any idea as to where she is. The only clue he has is a blurred photo he took of the surrounding area, in which he can just barely make out her red hair in a group of people next to the gas station entrance.
Rex cannot accept his loss and three years after her vanishing he still compulsively looks for her. He has a new girlfriend, but she is so fed up with Rex's obsession to understand Saskia's ultimate fate that she leaves him. His quest even results in him explaining her story on television.
In a series of intermittent flashbacks, Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), a respectable, though quirky, middle-class chemistry teacher, the kidnapper of Saskia, appears both alone and with his family, intricately plotting and planning his scheme to capture a random woman and murder her.
Eventually, Raymond, fascinated by Rex's fanatical compulsion to know what happened to Saskia, confronts Rex and admits to her kidnapping. He explains that he felt the need to test himself, to know whether he deserved others' high opinion of him, by finding out whether he could commit what for him was the ultimate act of evil. Rex's ultimate curiosity concerning Saskia keeps him from killing Raymond, which Raymond is fully aware of. Raymond finally invites Rex to the very same park and gas station where Saskia disappeared, and simply tells Rex that if he drinks a cup of coffee, supposedly spiked, he will know what happened to Saskia. After tormenting himself in indecision, Rex eventually drinks the concoction, falls unconscious, and wakes up to find that he has been buried alive, the same fate that Saskia met. For Raymond, a claustrophobe, this is his worst nightmare come true.
[edit] Cast and crew
The cast includes:
- Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu
- Gene Bervoets
- Johanna ter Steege
- Gwen Eckhaus
- Bernadette Le Saché
- Tania Latarjet
- Lucille Glenn
The music was produced by Henny Vrienten. It was edited by George Sluizer and Lin Friedman. The art director was Santiago Isidro Pin. Sound was managed by Piotr van Dijk. The cinematographer was Toni Kuhn.
[edit] Awards and recognition
- European Film Award, Best Supporting Actress, Johanna ter Steege (1988)
- Nederlands Film Festival, Dutch Film Critics Award, George Sluizer (1988)
- Nederlands Film Festival, Golden Calf (Best Film), George Sluizer, Anne Lordon (1988)
- T#55 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
