Vanishing Point

Shot on the Portuguese island of Madeira as he was simultaneously making City of Pirates, Vanishing Point is Ruiz’s homage to the downtimes and liminal zones of his beloved noir genre. His face draped in bandages, the film’s unnamed hero (Steve Baës) arrives at the resort town to play cards, doodle, and make eyes at a doctor’s secretary. But before long, he has witnessed a murder… or was it just a dream? Vanishing Point is a rib-tickling breadcrumb trail of repetitions and allusions, which fudges the line between seaside mystery and exiled boredom. As always, Ruiz is keeping up multiple games at once: according to Jonathan Rosenbaum (who called the film “maddeningly gratuitous”), Ruiz allegedly shot the movie in a bid to outdo Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s world record of 70-plus camera setups in a row, with no second takes.