Film #18 — 4/4 Films Based on Novels
Also filed under: A-One
By C. Ramsay
An extremely slow burning, quiet character study about loss, grief, and the human condition in the face of tragedy. Rex and Saskia, a couple on holiday, pull up to a busy rest stop where Saskia suddenly disappears. Rex, never having given up the search and taunted by postcards from the supposed abductor, returns to the scene after three years desperately seeking answers. Aside from a few minutes the audience has alone with Rex and Saskia at the beginning of the film, the killer is introduced early on. The focus is almost never on who, but on the depressingly unanswerable question of why.
Jumping between character perspectives, director George Sluizer subjects the viewer to a mixture of firsthand accounts of the actions of certain people as well as the secondhand understanding of them through stories and explanations. From our own viewpoint there is no telling what’s reliable or to what extent, we’re forced to accept what we’re given without question or risk our questions being forever unresolved. The scene of Saskia’s disappearance at the start of the film, shot from Rex’s point of view, provides a sample of the frustration this feeling brings—of realizing something isn’t right and thinking there must be an easy explanation, something simple we’ve overlooked, before the aching sense of dread starts to creep in, giving way to overwhelming panic. Everything can be done right and it still won’t matter.
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