I had been waiting for this to be released on DVD and ordered as it soon as it became available. I had already seen it a few times a very long time ago and was keen to watch it again. This isn't a film that grabs you by the throat and smashes the plot into your face. It builds slowly developing atmosphere and mounting tension. When I watch films in general from this era it becomes apparent that people must have had more patience and longer attention spans in those days than they do now. Contemporary Film and TV is dominated by clever short cut editing and fast pace to keep the audience entertained and attentive. Older films invited the audience to do a bit of work for themselves and allowed them to enjoy longer camera shots. It has been noted by others that the plot doesn't entirely make sense but I don't see why that's a problem. Since when did a good film have to make sense? The crux of this film is atmosphere and it does this fantastically. This is a very simple story with minimal character development. It is about two young pretty English nurses on a cycling trip in rural France. They have a row over how they should spend their time on the Holiday. Cathy wants to have fun and flirt with a handsome but strange man whose been following them whilst the more prim Jane wants to stick to their agreed schedule. Jane cycles off leaving Cathy sunbathing next to a secluded wooded area. Cathy disappears and Jane spends the rest of the film trying to enlist help from the locals in order to find out what happened. Cleverly in my opinion the director didn't include subtitles for the French dialogue so we feel just as much in the dark about what's going on as Jane does. However Jane learns from a older possibly lesbian English woman that three years previously another young female tourist was raped and murdered and it seems likely that Cathy has suffered the same fate. We then have to guess which of the odd ball creepy locals that Jane runs into is the murderer. Needless to say the most obvious suspect turns out to be a red heron but the true culprit is genuinely unexpected.
Review of And Soon the Darkness
