Vanishing Innocence

The Vanishing (1988) was Ms. Spenser’s idea: I figured it would be too scary. I was right. I had also made a point of not learning too much about this movie, so I was a little surprised out it worked out.

A Dutch couple, Gene Bervoets and Johanna ter Steege, are on vacation in France. They tease and bicker, and they run out of gas in a dark tunnel in the mountains. Bervoets starts walking back to the last gas stop, but ter Steege is frightened and begs him to stay. When he gets back, she is gone - but when he drives out of the tunnel, he finds her waiting in the sunlight.

They stop at a crowded gas station and rest stop. It’s full of other vacationers, mostly following the Tour de France. Ter Steege goes to get sodas and when she is out of sight for a second, she vanishes. Bervoets searches for her, more and more desperately, but she is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile, we get to meet Bernard-Pierre Bonnadieu, an ordinary man who seems to be practicing to abduct a woman. We noticed him at the gas station, but now we see him testing ether on himself, trying to get women into his car, and so forth. His wife wants to know what all of his traveling is about, but he claims he is working on an old farmhouse. He seems almost comical, getting shunned as creepy by most women, or getting noticed by his daughter’s gym teacher.

Three years go by. Bervoets has a new girlfriend, but he hasn’t given up searching for ter Steege. He even says he probably would have broken up with her, but has to know what happened. He has been getting notes from someone who might have been the perpetrator, asking for meetings but never showing up. Finally, Bonnadieu meets him, and shows him what happened. SPOILER - it is very bad.

I had assumed that this was one of those existential movies, where you never find out what happened. Oh, if only.