The Pointsman


The Pointsman is a 1986 Dutch film directed by Jos Stelling, starring Jim van der Woude, Stéphane Excoffier and John Kraaijkamp, Sr. It tells the story of a French woman who moves in with a Dutch railwayman at a remote railway station. The two are unable to converse, but soon begin a strange game of seduction. The film is based on the novel De wisselwachter by Jean-Paul Franssens.
Kraaijkamp was awarded the Golden Calf for Best Actor for his performance in the film.

Plot

A French woman gets off a train by mistake at a remote location. She tries to ask the pointsman for help, but the two do not understand each other's languages. She waits for another train to arrive, but it never happens.
She eventually moves in with the man at the station. Without being able to speak, the two begin to develop a relationship over the next few months.

Production

The movie was filmed at Corrour Station, Rannoch Moor, in the Scottish Highlands with Scotrail providing use of the trains.
The interior shots were taken in the Netherlands where a scale replica of the Corrour Station interior was constructed in a garage of the Jongeneel timber yard on the Zeedijk in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Cast

Reception

Critical response

Janet Maslin of The New York Times described the film as "a mixture of strange, inchoate passions and even stranger Dutch humor, and there is little about it to capture the imagination. The characters and their actions are inscrutable, made even more so by the near-total absence of dialogue. The film's empty, mutable vistas look good but evoke very little." Time Out London wrote: "Taking no account of plausibility, Stelling's exploration of the uses and abuses of power is art house fare, but neither obscure nor elitist. Enthralling performances generate a claustrophobic tension, but there's humour too."