The Vanishing

Traceless.

Spoorloos (AKA: The Vanishing) is directed by George Sluizer and Sluizer co-adapts the screenplay with Tim Krabbe from Krabbes own novella The Golden Egg. It stars Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna ter Steege and Gwen Eckhaius. Music is by Hennie Vrienten and cinematography by Toni Kuhn.

Its a lesson in creeping unease, a film firmly interested in character development as it unfurls a tale of obsession whilst casting a clinical observation of a sociopath at work. Story is basic on plot terms, young lovers are separated during a vacation when the girl mysteriously disappears. So begins her boyfriends obsessive search that spans years, then things get intriguing as the person responsible for girls disappearan...

George Sluizer's 1988 film <i>Spoorloos</i> (The Vanishing) is the story of a murder and the search for the killer, but it's not a whodunit for the audience at any rate. Just after Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) disappears at a French rest stop while vacationing with her boyfriend Rex (Gene Bervoets), the audience sees the long chronicle of local chemistry teacher Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) preparing to carry out a murder of some random woman. As the film rises towards a climax, we follow Rex's obsessive hunt not for justice and retribution, but for simple understanding of what happened to his love. It is that unquenchable curiosity to know the very details, to indirectly share Saskia's fate that drives Rex forward on a dark qu...