Trackless (1988)

Directed by: George Sluizer | 107 minutes | drama, horror, thriller | Actors: Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Gene Bervoets, Johanna Ter Steege, Gwen Eckhaus, Bernadette Le Saché, Tania Latarjet, Lucille Glenn, Roger Souza, Caroline Appéré, Pierre Forget, Didier Rousset, Raphaeline, Robert Lucibello, David Bayle, Doumee

Saskia suffers from a recurring nightmare, in which she is locked in a golden egg and must live forever in lonely darkness. The moment she tells this to husband Rex, their car comes to a stop in a long unlit tunnel.

This is the ominous prologue with which screenwriter Tim Krabbé completes his already suspenseful novella ‘The Golden Egg’. It is the beginning of a real nightmare: the disappearance of the beloved into absolute nothingness, a nothing so empty that the straggler himself wants to disappear. The primordial fear of man, linked to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

The setting: a bickering couple on the French autoroute who makes amends and then loves each other even more than before, in the languid sun with the Tour de France stage report in the background. And then the sudden nothing.

This is Nether horror and it’s not meant to be sarcastic. The book was already good, but Krabbé and George Sluizer know how to go the extra mile. Although with a little eye-catching, albeit decent – ​​protagonist (Bervoets), the story can take it. Krabbé and Sluizer turn a good family man into Lemorne – a messenger of death, the phantom savior of the obsessed Rex, who is looking for his identity. Lemorne even gets Messianic features at the end. The hypothermic Donnadieu convinces as Jekyll & Hide of this film, who prepare his cold deed under Henny Vrienten’s cheerful French sounds. Johanna Ter Steege, who received a European film prize (Felix) as Saskia for the best female supporting role, is the ultimate polder lover, with freckles and three-quarter pants.

Not a world classic perhaps, but that is largely due to the limited budget; ‘Spoorloos’ is not an ‘Attack’ or ‘Character’, the film can compete with the great Dutch book adaptations and the best scripts from Hollywood because of the beautifully portrayed love horror. In 1993, Sluizer had Jeff Bridges (Lemorne), Kiefer Sutherland (Rex) and Sandra Bullock (Saskia) do the dance with death again. Krabbé did not call this second ‘Vanishing’ a film adaptation but a rape. It is no coincidence that the American remake is a lesser thriller: the Dutch can do it too, and sometimes even better; without special effects or happy ending.