Pamela Franklin and Michele Dotrice star as two young British nurses on a bicycle tour in France. What starts out as a happy holiday trip turns into a tale of terror when one of the girls vanishes and the other has strange encounters with a mysterious man on a scooter, some weird local folks and a distrustful policeman.
AND SOON is a simple yet compelling little thriller that still has its merits almost 40 years after its release. The screenplay as well as Fuest's skillfull direction are definitely unique in that they try to avoid the common genre ingredients that all too often are used mindlessly as cheap techniques to create tension. Dusk, darkness, shadows, thunderstorms, etc. - you won't find many of these clichéd scare-tactics in this film. Due to its rather minimalistic plotting I can easily see that people might find AND SOON too slow moving and not particularly rewarding a rewatch once the final twist is revealed. But for me it's all about the brooding atmosphere of the sun-drenched countryside where most of the film takes place in broad daylight. The vast and yet reduced setting of rural France, the loneliness on the country road, the lack of dialogue and the growing desperation of our heroine really drew me in. AND SOON takes an approach quite different from similar plot premises where our usual American hero moves along in a foreign setting with ease and confidence. Here our protagonist is pretty much stranded and completely dependent on the good will of the people she meets. Not a very pleasant thought considering their suspicious and somewhat menacing behaviour. Moreover, our heroine doesn't speak French and whatever little information she finally gets out of the locals ("Bad road!") doesn't sound too promising. Appropriately, no subtitles are provided for the audience, putting any viewer not so fluent in French in the same situation as her.
Apart from the happy main theme Laurie Johnson delivers a subdued score to accompany the proceedings until the tense ending in a creepy junkyard. The photography revels in the warmly lit landscape and cleverly uses the sparse and isolated buildings to accentuate the open fields, contrasting the powerful scenery with the vulnerability of our forlorn protagonist. The camera work is quite naturally dominated by the horizon and horizontal compositions yet I love that shot at the end the most when the camera slowly tilts down and finally, after all the sun, heat and sweat, a light summer rain sets in and washes away the dirt. I highly recommend AND SOON when you are in the right mood for an atmospheric thriller that slowly builds up tension and doesn't spell out everything for the viewer.
I watched a decent open matte TV print and I am quite happy with it. As I have seen that AB put out a dvd quite some time ago I wonder if it is worth upgrading for the audio commentary alone. Do Fuest and screenwriter Clemens have some interesting stories to share?
