Het dwaallicht

Summary

This film is a reasonably accurate adaptation of Willem Elsschot's last work, a 40-page melancholic novella written in 1948.

Buyens, who had known the writer personally, had already toyed with the idea of filming the book, but Elsschot's family had refused to sell him the rights to the work. Henri Storck, Charles Dekeukeleire and André Delvaux had also considered similar projects. In 1971, Elsschot's daughter Adèle De Ridder finally agreed to part with the rights to her father's book, allowing documentary filmmaker Buyens to begin work on what was to be his second work of fiction.

Will-o-the Wisp, described by Buyens as an essay film, revolves around the nocturnal search by Laarmans and three Pakistani sailors for the house of a young girl. Laarmans is a disillusioned 50-year-old, smothered by his petit-bourgeois environment. Their wanderings are treated as a metaphor, as a search for the self and for genuine human contact.

Aside from the three principal actors (Buyens' daughter Eva Kant, Romain Deconinck and Dora Van der Groen), the entire cast consisted of non-professionals. The film was shot in the historic city centre of Antwerp and in an old bourgeois townhouse. Due to financial problems, the original idea of filming in Bombay had to be abandoned. The final cost of this co-production between Buyens' company Iris Films Dacapo and Max Appelboom's Amsterdam-based Appletree fluctuated around 11 million Belgian francs, with the relevant Ministries of both countries providing around half of this sum. Will-o-the Wisp was distributed in six copies but failed to obtain spectacular box-office results.