The Vanishing World 1987

A young Dutch couple, Rex and Saskia, are on holiday in France. As they drive, Saskia shares a recurring dream of drifting through space inside a golden egg. In the latest vision, another egg appears containing another person, and the sense that the collision of the two eggs might signal the end of something.

Their car runs out of petrol at a quiet rest area, and Rex promises never to abandon Saskia. They bury two coins at the base of a tree as a symbol of their romance. Saskia goes into a petrol station to buy drinks and does not return. Rex searches frantically, consumed by the fear of losing her.

Earlier in the story, Raymond, a wealthy family man, secretly plots to abduct a woman. He buys an isolated house, experiments with chloroform, and rehearses ways to entice women into his car. When his initial attempts fail, he disguises himself as an injured motorist and drives to the rest area outside town, where he will not be recognized.

Three years after Saskia’s disappearance, Rex continues his search. He receives several postcards inviting him to meet the kidnapper at a cafe in Nîmes, but the kidnapper never shows. Unbeknownst to Rex, the cafe sits directly opposite Raymond’s apartment, where the abductor watches Rex wait. Rex’s new girlfriend, Lieneke, reluctantly helps with the search. One night Rex dreams again of being inside a golden egg, a symbol that gnaws at his obsession, and Lieneke leaves him.

Rex makes a public appeal on television, asking only to know the truth about what happened to Saskia. Raymond confronts Rex and admits to the kidnapping, offering to reveal Saskia’s fate if Rex accompanies him. He explains his unsettling philosophy: he has long believed he lacks a conscience and is therefore capable of anything; to prove himself worthy, he must refrain from an evil act, yet he still contemplates it. He recounts how he abducted Saskia at the rest stop by posing as a traveling salesman and enticing her into his car.

Raymond drives Rex to the rest area. He dismisses Rex’s threats of police action, insisting there is no evidence connecting him to the crime. He pours a cup of drugged coffee and asserts that the only way to learn what happened to Saskia is to experience it himself. Waiting in the car, Rex rages, unsure of what to do.

After a grim sequence of choices, Rex drinks the drugged coffee and wakes to find himself buried in a box underground, the coins they once buried years earlier now a silent reminder.

Back at Raymond’s country home, a newspaper sits in a car with a headline about the double disappearance of Saskia and Rex, their portraits framed in two egg-shaped ovals, leaving the viewer with a haunting image of a crime that tests the boundaries of conscience and fate.