Disappeared Without a Trace (1988)

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Movie
German title Disappeared without a trace
Original title Spoorloos
Country of production Netherlands , France
original language French , Dutch , English
Publishing year 1988
length 103 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director George Sluizer
script George Sluizer
Tim Krabbé (novel)
production Anne Lordon
George Sluizer
music Henny Vrienten
camera Toni Kuhn
cut Lin Friedman
George Sluizer
occupation

A feature film by the Dutch director George Sluizer has disappeared without a trace . Sluizer produced the thriller together with Anne Lordon in 1988, and it was released in theaters that same year. Disappeared without a trace was filmed in French , Dutch and English .

action

Rex and Saskia, a newly in love couple from Amsterdam , are on their way to France by car and their bikes to spend their holidays there. The two of them have a little argument on the way, and at a motorway service station near Nîmes , Saskia gets out of the car for a moment to buy drinks while Rex refuels the car. But Rex waits in vain for his girlfriend to return. She disappeared without a trace on the way to the drinks machine.

Shocked by the sudden disappearance of his girlfriend, Rex immediately contacts the police and presents the officers with a blurry photo of Saskia with her killer. But the photo is just as neglected as his suggestion to check all the coins in the drinks machine for fingerprints, and Saskia cannot be found.

In flashbacks, the viewer learns that Saskia was kidnapped from Nîmes by the family man Raymond Lemorne. When Lemorne saves a child from drowning on a family outing, he is celebrated like a hero by his own children. But the admiration of his two daughters means nothing to Lemorne, and the sociopath sets himself the task of doing the most terrible of all deeds a human being is capable of. In the following years, Lemorne bought a remote house nearby. The trained chemist begins to test the duration of the effects of narcotics on himself. He's also trying out how to address a young woman and lure her into his car as quickly as possible in order to numb her there. Lemorne can dispel his wife's concerns and questions about why he spends so much time in the remote house. In the following years, however, he does not succeed in luring the women he desires into his car. Prostitutes have always run the risk of falling victim to a violent crime and are therefore of no interest to the perfectionist Lemorne, who constantly measures his pulse on his forays into Nîmes.

In another failed attempt - he unknowingly speaks to his daughter's volleyball coach - she sarcastically gives him the sarcastic tip to drive to the rest stop a few kilometers outside the city, because there he would meet “numerous willing women”. Lemorne follows the advice of the woman and also learns English in his secluded house in order to be able to communicate better at the internationally frequented rest stop. He has also developed a new method of luring women into his car: he places a trailer in a secluded spot in the parking lot and, while sitting in the car right in front of the service area, pretends that he doesn't know how to attach it to his car. He offers to drive the young women the short distance to the trailer.

But even these attempts fail miserably. But coincidence comes to Lemorne's aid, and his daughter gives him a photo album for his birthday that portrays his life and contains, among other things, a photo of him as a teenager with a plaster cast around his arm. Lemorne then tinkered himself with a plaster of paris to look frail, and drives back to the rest stop to try his luck with the trailer tactic. In fact, he succeeds in addressing a young girl and luring him into his car, but when he tries to get in himself, he sneezes and blows his nose with the handkerchief soaked in anesthetic. To forestall a fainting attack, he takes refuge in the rest area's toilet and washes his face. He buys a coffee at the drinks machine and runs into Saskia there, who asks him for change.

While talking to Lemorne, Saskia tries to brush up on her French language skills and discovers a pendant with a gold R on Lemorne's keychain, a birthday present from his daughter. Saskia is interested in buying the same key fob for her friend Rex, and during the brief interview, Lemorne pretends to be a sales representative for these items and has a box of key fobs in the car. Saskia follows the man to his car, she is initially suspicious, but gets in when she sees a photo of Lemorne's family on the dashboard. In the car, Lemorne overpowers her with a handkerchief soaked in anesthetic and takes her off.

Three years go by, but Rex has still not got over Saskia's disappearance without a trace and is increasingly suffering from nightmares. The search for her becomes an obsession for Rex, and among other things he has invested 300,000 francs in two poster campaigns which, however, did not lead to any leads. Rex also receives more and more postcards from a stranger who promises to tell him more about the disappearance of Saskia.

To meet the mysterious postcard writer, Rex travels to Nîmes with his new girlfriend Lieneke, but they never meet there. Lemorne, who turns out to be the said postcard writer, notices that Rex did not appear alone at the agreed meeting point and avoids meeting him.

After an interview on French television in which Rex appeals to the kidnapper, Lemorne's interest in informing Rex about his girlfriend's whereabouts is increased. Lemorne takes the car to Amsterdam, where he approaches Rex, who has just separated from Lieneke. When Rex learns that the man standing in front of him is the mysterious postcard writer and offers him to provide information about the disappearance of his girlfriend, Rex freaks out and beats Lemorne. Nevertheless, a short time later Rex agrees to go to France with Lemorne.

During the long drive, Rex learns how Lemorne came across Saskia, but the kidnapper does not tell him the whereabouts of his girlfriend. Lemorne offers Rex to quench his curiosity and let him experience exactly the same thing that happened to Saskia. Rex is unsure, he is stealing Lemorne's key chain, among other things, in order to incriminate his girlfriend's kidnapper, but Lemorne assures him that this is not a solid indication for the police that he had anything to do with the disappearance of Saskia, and so does Rex never find out what happened to his girlfriend.

Rex agrees to Lemorne's proposal and voluntarily drinks the anesthetized coffee. When he wakes up from his faint, he is in a wooden box that Lemorne is currently burying. Lemorne buries Rex alive in his remote property, as he did with Saskia three years earlier. Rex cannot free himself and dies, but finds himself reunited with Saskia in death. The young man's disappearance makes waves in the tabloids, but there is no evidence that Lemorne had anything to do with the couple's disappearance.

History of origin

The film is based on the 1984 novel Het Gouden Ei by the Dutch writer Tim Krabbé - the brother of the famous actor Jeroen Krabbé . The title of the thriller is based on the nightmares that happen to the protagonist after his girlfriend disappears. He dreams of meeting his girlfriend again in a golden egg in the universe. The film suggests that the golden egg is a blurred perception of car headlights, which were tinted yellow in France at the time.

Remake

George Sluizer turned 1993 American remake of The Vanishing , under the title The Vanishing (dt Title:. Spurlos ) came into the North American cinemas. Here Jeff Bridges takes on the role of sociopath. Sandra Bullock mimes the missing friend, while Kiefer Sutherland impersonates her friend, who cannot cope with her disappearance.

criticism

“The film develops its high tension from the confrontation between two fundamentally different men, at the same time it reflects on the apparently baseless evil in our world. The pitch-black end of the film is reminiscent of a story penned by Edgar Allan Poe "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

The Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege was awarded the European Film Prize for Best Supporting Actress for her play of the missing friend . At the Portuguese film festival Fantasporto , which has been awarding awards for films from the Fantasy genre since 1981 , Traceless Disappeared was awarded the prize for best director two years after its cinema release, and Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu was named best leading actor.

European Film Award 1988

Fantastic postage 1990

Mystfest 1991

  • Best script
  • nominated for the best film

Nederlands Film Festival 1988

Recording locations

  • Tunnel de Roux: The road tunnel that you see in the first few minutes of the film is in the Cevennes and was built in 1929 as a railway tunnel on the 'Transcévenole' line. The railway was never completed and the tunnel was expanded into a road tunnel.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Disappeared without a trace. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed August 15, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used