wie heeft deze vrouw gezien? - Spoorloos/The Vanishing (1988)

"i have a leeeeettle trailer...."

Do you like bleak Dutch psychological horror from the eighties? Does a film made Stanley Kubrick say that it was the most terrifying film he’d seen sound like it’s right up your street? Well, then I have a delicious treat for you, dear reader because to celebrate my very brief day trip back to my home country yesterday, I have a movie from… well not from Belgium but starring one of Belgium’s most esteemed actors, that counts, totally, yes it does.

Spoilers, natuurlijk.

Spoorloos/The Vanishing

Directed by: George Sluizer

Screenplay by: George Sluizer, Tim Krabbé (based on Krabbé’s 1984 novella The Golden Egg)

Starring: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanne ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus

Running time: 107 minutes

Original release date: 27 October 1988

the plot, in brief

Summer, 1987. Rex Hofman (Bervoets) and Saskia Wagter (ter Steege), a young Dutch couple, are on a road trip to a holiday in France. Out of gas and having only barely made up after an argument at the side of the road, the couple arrives at a motorway services station. Saskia makes Rex promise to never abandon her, and the two bury a pair of coins at the base of a tree as a symbol of their love. Saskia goes into the gas station to purchase drinks, and doesn’t come back out. As the day draws into night, Rex’s bafflement turns into panicked horror, and he searches frantically for her to no avail.

Three years later. Rex has yet to give up, still desperately seeking for an answer. But what he doesn’t know is that the one man who is able to give him what he needs is watching him…

but first

Why is this look giving the lost eighth brother from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I ask.

five things I rather liked about Spoorloos/The Vanishing

the golden egg

Spoorloos starts out deceptively simple, with Rex and Saskia in the car driving through France. We spend time with them as they chat, playing games to pass the time and generally looking very much like they’re in love. At this point, Saskia tells Rex that she had her recurring dream again the night previously: in the dream, she’s floating through space in a golden egg. Only this time, a second golden egg containing another person appeared, and she muses that, should both eggs collide, it would signal the end of something.

They run out of gas not long after, precariously stranded inside a tunnel, where they just about avoid collision with another vehicle - Saskia panics, thinking the vehicle’s bright lights may be the golden egg she dreamed of. After an argument with Rex, who walks off and leaves a still panicked Saskia (who is looking for a flashlight) in the car while he goes off to find gas, Rex returns (with gas) and cannot find Saskia in the car. He drives to the end of the tunnel, where Saskia, clutching the flashlight, is bathed in a beautiful golden daylight.

It’s an effective introduction to the couple. Rex looks at Saskia like she *is* the sunlight, and even thought she can be a bit away with the fairies, they love each other with a burning intensity, which makes what comes next such a devastating blow.

the light goes out

The two pull up at a roadside services station. It’s high season, emphasized by glorious golden sunlight and crackling coverage of that day’s Tour le France, as well as the general busyness of the services station. It’s then that we briefly cut to a man we have not yet met, but immediately know spells trouble. Sitting in his car, the man puts on a fake sling, before carefully, meticulously, unwrapping a plaster cast covered in newspaper and inserting his arm. He bunches up the newspaper, steps out of the car, and goes to wait.

As I said, we haven’t met him yet, but we know now that there is potential danger, and that thought will sit with you as Saskia and Rex make up, and she goes to the bathroom in the services station, coming back with a cheap frisbee for them to muck around with. They hang out, they play around, the sun continues shining. Saskia makes Rex swear to never abandon her again, after the incident in the tunnel, and Rex happily does so, with the two burying a pair of coins at the base of one of the trees as a symbol of their connection.

And then, Saskia goes to buy drinks.

Rex waits at the car. Minutes go by. Hours go by. The sun starts losing ground, giving way to the evening. Rex’s whole energy shifts, from confused, to horrified, to terrified, as he starts frantically searching for Saskia. The staff at the services station are of no help, but there’s almost no way they can be given that the day is busy and the footfall is plentiful. There is no way they could have kept attention on one specific woman. And as the night falls, and Rex gets nowhere, it’s like the sun has gone from his eyes. From his life.

Raymond Lemorne: the murder nerd

Sluizer then pulls off a nifty change of point of view, as we cut to some time earlier and properly meet the man with the fake cast. His name is Raymond Lemorne (Donnadieu), and he is a family man, chemistry teacher, and seemingly devoted to the renovation of his second property, a tucked away country home.

He is also planning to kill a woman. And he is doing so with more preparation than some of us have done for a singular school exam, because this man has a notebook, a timer, a nice little countryside house far away from anyone where nobody can hear you scream (SOMETHING WHICH HE TESTS OUT LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHO BECAUSE HE IS ONE) and seemingly endless time to do practice runs. We watch him practice approaching people, time to the exact second how long it takes to knock someone out with chloroform (ON HIMSELF), keep track of his heartrate while doing so, just generally being a fucking murder nerd, even when his first few attempts (BAD attempts, he is VERY BAD at this) go wrong.

At no point do we get an explanation as to why this is happening (at least not yet). We just hang out with this quiet menace, watching as he calmly explains to his wife and daughter that, no, he’s not having an affair, he’s just REALLY enjoying doing up this house, OKAY?

justice for Lieneke

Three years later, and Rex has not given up on finding, if not Saskia, then at least the truth about what happened to her. Sluizer again plays a blinder, because we as the audience get the pieces of Saskia’s disappearance drip fed to us. That amazing shot up there, where Raymond sees Saskia at the gas station, you would think it’s him zoning in on her as his victim, but it’s not, not really. More on that later, though, because we need to talk about Lieneke.

Lieneke (Eckhaus) is Rex’s new girlfriend. From the second we meet her, watching as Rex goes to inspect one of his many, many HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN posters, we know exactly how she’s feeling. She is the Second Mrs. De Winter, she is haunted by this man’s lost love, she is forever going to be second banana to a woman Rex has spent truly bonkers amounts of money on searching for. By that point, Rex has begun to receive mysterious postcards from someone, inviting him to wait for the kidnapper at a cafe in Nîmes. Rex sits, waits and stews, as Lieneke tries to talk sense into him. But what both of them don’t realise and Sluizer reveals to us in a rather spectacular slow pan shot, is that they’re being watched by Raymond, whose apartment is across the road from the cafe.

Gwen Eckhaus is fantastic in this brief role, forever just on the brink of slapping sense back into Rex who is at this point VERY far gone into his own obsession. But she chooses herself, and Rex, to his credit, is very understanding when she eventually leaves him.

Well, he is until he has a bit of a menty b as he sits down at a chunky old-school computer and watches, his beautiful face just warped in his own delusion, as everything on the screen turns into Saskia’s name.

And then, he ventures downstairs, where he is approached by a visitor.

Rex meets Raymond

Raymond approaches Rex, stating plainly that he is the one he’s been looking for, and that he is willing to reveal what happened to Saskia if Rex comes with him on a drive to France. Rex rages, starts beating up Raymond, but eventually he gives in and takes up Raymond’s offer. In the passenger’s seat on the way to France, Raymond explains to Rex that he has known from a young age that he is a sociopath and has no conscience. As a teen, he suddenly got the urge to jump from the balcony of his house (the same flat he still lives in), just to see if he could, going against what he felt to be the predestined instinct not to jump.

The result was a broken arm and two missing fingers, but also a clear vision to his true self. Some years later, on a day out with his family, he rescues a young girl from drowning. In that moment, he resolved to commit the worst possible crime he could think of, in order to test if he was worthy of his daughter’s admiration. He reasons that one can only be a truly good person if one is capable of doing something evil, but chooses not to do it.

To his eternal credit, Donnadieu plays Raymond as calm and collected, even when he’s failing hopelessly (the scene where he practices English over and over again is a particular stand out, just for him giving the full Allo Allo!-style pronunciation to the phrase “I have a leeeettle trailer.”). He never lashes out, never raises his voice, and is all the scarier for it. He is calm as he explains himself to Rex. We see a flashback of Raymond on his birthday, getting presented with a photo album and pausing on a picture of him as a teen, in the cast. This is where the final piece of his murder puzzle clicks into place and he realises that he needs to appear weak to his potential victim.

At the services station, this nearly works, until he accidentally sneezes into his chloroformed handkerchief. Letting his chosen victim go, he goes to the bathroom and ditches his cast. When he comes back out, he goes to the coffee vending machine, and this is where he crosses paths with Saskia, who - in adorably broken French - asks him to change some coins.

Raymond was never deliberately targeting just Saskia, not really. Saskia just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, too trusting of Raymond even as he snatches on to her admiration of his keyring (gifted to him by his daughter) and lies that he’s a salesman with more in his car. Saskia follows him, her eyes giving away that she’s decided he’s alright as she spots a picture of him with his family in the car. It’s a decision that will cost her her life, and watching those sunshine eyes wide with betrayal as Raymond chloroforms her is a kick in the gut.

Rex and Raymond drive to the very spot where Saskia was kidnapped. It’s dark, rainy. Raymond gives Rex a choice: if he wants to know, he needs to share her experience. Rex at first refuses, knowing that if she’s dead, it means he will die too. But after a truly harrowing moment where he goes to dig up the coins they left there, as a symbol of their connection, and rages against the world, he decides to drink the sleeping pill-laced coffee Raymond has provided him. He reasons that it is his way of going against predestination.

Then, the screen goes black.

Then, a glimpse of Raymond, digging a hole in the rain.

Then, black. Breathing. A lighter lights up a tiny flame, revealing Rex’s fate, and in turn Saskia’s. Buried alive, Rex rages, cries out Saskia’s name, before slowly, surely, surrendering himself. The next day, Raymond is sat outside, looking out over the garden of his beloved fixer-upper property in the countryside. His family is there. It’s a sunshiny day, but there is a look in Raymond’s eyes that betrays a new emptiness. Yes, he has done what he set out to do, but for what? Because now, buried under where his wife is planting two trees, lies the evidence of his sociopathy. The camera pans to a newspaper, with a headline about Rex’s disappearance, which is noted to have been similar to Saskia’s. Pictures of their faces are printed in egg-shaped oval frames, calling back to Saskia’s dream.

And that’s the thought the film leaves us on.

Spoorloos was released in France under the title L'Homme Qui Voulait Savoir - meaning, the man who wanted to know. Ultimately, that’s the horror of Spoorloos. The horror of not knowing, of possibly never knowing what happened to Saskia is what leads to Rex’s demise. He is consumed with Saskia and her disappearance, and even as he rages against the path his life has taken, to France, to that same tree at that same rest stop, on a cold dark night, he still would rather know, even though it brings him death.

Additionally, the horror of knowing that he was responsible will have to sit on Raymond’s shoulders for the rest of his life, like a specter perpetually haunting him, asking if it was really worth it for the admiration of his daughter. It’s a bleak, beautiful and ultimately crushing viewing experience about the banality of evil. Because evil need not come from a mastermind villain. Sometimes evil can just be your friendly chemistry teacher.

special sixth thing how lucky are we today

Also, Rex calls Raymond a “flapdrol” at one point, and it’s such a hilariously funny moment because of all the insults in the Dutch language you could think of, you went for, essentially, “flap doodle” and I think that’s beautiful to be honest. Coupled with Rex’s decidedly unimpressed face during the lengthy, LENGTHY drive, and the clear build-up of frustration, and you can easily follow his trail of thought down to “I have no idea how to properly express myself in this situation so I’m just going to call this man the most puerile thing I can think of because I NEED TO DO SOMETHING.”

Also, he’s not wrong. Just saying.

*god that’s a terrible trailer