Actualités

Stars: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus, Bernadette Le Saché, Tania Latarjet, Lucille Glenn, Roger Souza | Written and Directed by George Sluizer

Adapting Tim Krabbé’s novel The Golden Egg, writer/director George Sluizer begins The Vanishing with Dutch couple Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna Ter Steege) enjoy a biking holiday in France. That all changes when they stop at a gas station where Saskia enters to get drinks, only to vanish without a trace. Three years later, Rex remains as obsessed with finding his wife as he puts up posters and pleads his case on television. He is eventually approached by Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), an unassuming chemistry teacher who claims to know what happened.

What could have been a bog-standard thriller instead subverts the expected structure to answer the big questions early on, before taking the psychological route to focus on Rex’s tortured obsession...

My guest for this month is Herb van der Poll, and he’s joined me to discuss the film I chose for him, the 1988 Dutch–French film The Vanishing. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.

Show notes:

The director, George Sluizer, didn’t really direct much else besides this film and its remake The soundtrack definitely has a Tears for Fears vibe to it, which is 100% ok with me Herb checked with his Dutch parents to make sure we pronounced Spoorloos correctly Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu is basically perfect as the villain in this film If you enjoy this film, you’d probably also love Alfred Hitchock’s The Lady Vanishes The actress who plays the second girlfriend Lieneke, Gwen Eckhaus, was randomly in a television series in the Netherlands called Spoorloos verdwenen, which I assume is unrelated Getting a compliment on your film from Stanley Kubrick is a big...