The Film Library

Bunny Lake Is Missing

I don't normally like to talk about movies in this group when I haven't read the book that they were based on, but I was so impressed by this one that I had to break that little 'rule'.

I'm probably overstating the quality of this movie(in fact, I know I am), but Bunny Lake Is Missing is one of those out-of-left-field discoveries that keep me watching any random film I come across. I had never heard of this film, and only watched it because, well, it was on and it was my day off and I didn't feel like getting off the couch just yet. The film bears more than a passing resemblance to The Lady Vanishes or the more recent Flightplan, in that it concerns a woman looking for someone whom others don't believe existed. In this case the missing person is a child, Bunny Lake, whose mother dropped her off at school, and when she came to pick her up found that no one at the school remembered ever seeing her. 

Laurence Olivier plays the Scotland Yard inspector on the case, and Otto Preminger directs. The film has VERY drastic widescreen, and all of the shots look carefully chosen. Preminger's direction maintains a constant elegant tone, even when the characters descend into madness and hysteria. I see that it's being remade for release next year, with Joe Carnahan directing and writing it. I know it's premature, and I like to keep an open mind about remakes in general, but I have a bad feeling about this(to quote Star Wars). Carnahan is known for hyper-kinetic bloodbaths, basically the polar opposite of this film.