“Spoorloos” (1988)

In my search for films, I came across a not very well-known film “Spoorloos”, the description and reviews of which interested me …. However, I tried not to read the reviews especially to avoid spoilers.
In this film, we see on the screen an idyllic decade in the history of mankind before the advent of the Internet, coronavirus and everything else.

Idyllic pictures of the bearded man’s leisure time in the circle of his family give everything that is happening more embossed shade.
Throughout the film, it seems to the viewer that it will be about some kind of banal, more or less inventive rape, or something like that, since this man, most likely, did not receive some sexual sensations he needed in his exemplary family.
But our French bearded murderer turned out to be not a banal pervert, but a man testing himself for the ability to cause mortal harm to another person.
And just to keep the intrigue of the film a secret until the last moment, the author of the film does not allow the killer to tell Rex and us too much, that is why the killer is just speculating for a long time whether he is capable of doing things.
It seems to me that the killer’s reasoning is quite rational. In Russian literature – there is a novel “Crime and Punishment”, and the main character in his reasoning asks himself the question: am I an ordinary creature or have a special right? In general, it is for extraordinary people that he recognizes their right to crime.

So here they are – Rex and the killer.
Rex feels hatred, but he also has a feeling that finally what he has been waiting for so long is happening, and therefore Rex even feels some elation.

From Rex’s point of view, the intervention of higher powers leaves no doubt, because just at the moment when he doubted whether he should drink murderer’s sleeping pills, thunder suddenly struck and a downpour began, and Rex found himself near the very tree under which Saskia buried her comic treasure. And this was, undoubtedly, a sign to Rex from the higher powers that he must continue his deadly journey in search of his beloved, no matter what it cost him.

It is quite difficult for the viewer to recognize and correctly interpret the intervention of the Higher Forces, because in general the film was filmed in a rather mundane, deliberately everyday manner, and only these rattling organ sounds give everything that happens a little timeless and detached.

I can confess that within a few seconds after the light at the end of the tunnel was shown and Saskia smiling standing there, I suddenly believed that this story had a good ending and Rex really found Saskia and was rewarded was rewarded for his loyalty and courage in this brave journey in search of his beloved, accompanied by a representative of the dark forces.

After that, I involuntarily recalled that scene in the tunnel at the beginning of the film, when Saskia is scared, she tries to find a flashlight shouting to him: “Rex, don’t go! I’m afraid!” And Rex calmly leaves, despite her screams. It seemed to me that everything that happened was a punishment for Rex for leaving his woman in a frightening dark tunnel.
And at the very end my perception became very cynical and aloof – I thought: yes, these lovers met in another world. I remembered the phrase “Until death do us part” and that Spanish anecdote when, after death, a wife finds a husband in heaven, but the husband declares to his wife that he promised to be with her only untill death but not after death.

I especially appreciated this special birds cooing, which is typical for the southern European countries 🙂

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