The Waiting Room (1995) by Jos Stelling is a Dutch film about a lustful man (Gene Bervoets) waiting in a train station, his wife (Annet Malherbe) on a quest to acquire some coffee, and the beautiful woman in blue (Bianca Koedam) who embodies all that the man seeks in a sexual partner. Whether the sexual encounter between the man and this woman is fantasy or reality is never made clear.
A Woman Scorned
The film opens with the wife attempting to get change for a cup of coffee. Her misadventure is punctuated by satirical music, indicating that she is not to be taken seriously. Her return later in the film, after her husband has possibly had sex with another woman, is once again accompanied by this music. This time, it is her blindness to her husband's infidelity that the music mocks.
This seems to indicate that her husband actually did engage in intercourse with the woman in blue. However, music that closes the film casts doubt on this interpretation. As the man notices the woman in blue's likeness on a billboard, he gets a dreamy look in his eye and ethereal music beings to play. This music indicates a dream-state, but whether it is his memories or his fantasies he is indulging in is left to the viewer's discretion.
The Sounds of Desire
The sounds of the train station often indicate the man's desirous feelings. When he first eyes the black woman, a slight rumble from a train is heard, also when he looks at the legs of the woman in glasses. There are rumbles throughout the scenes with the woman in blue. Whenever they share glances, when she pulls her skirt up to tease him, his desire is made palpable.
After the man lights a woman's cigarette (accompanied by a rumble), she blows smoke and the sound of her breath is clearly audible, despite the man now being across the room from her. Due to his desire, she is all he can hear. The man also notices a woman eating an ice-cream cone. The volume of the sexual noises she makes licking the phallic cone is heightened to indicate the focus of his attention.
Whenever a woman descends the steps of the station, her footsteps are audible above all else: nowhere is this truer than with the arrival of the woman in blue. When this woman, more beautiful than any other in the station, stops in front of him, the screeching of brakes is heard: he is scared; he is out of his depth. Despite his fear, he cannot look away, and as she opens her coat the sound of steam being released from a train is heard, indicating perhaps both the cartoon-like steam coming from his ears at this point, and the “heat” released from beneath her clothing.
Fantasy or Reality?
Eventually the man either escapes into fantasy, or the woman decides she can tease him no more, and they begin to have sex. As they do so, all sound except for their breath is gone. The climax of the act is indicated by the clack of a train going over the tracks, eventually reaching a crescendo. Once finished, the woman in blue is still the only thing the man has the will to notice, and her steps as she leaves are the only audible thing in the station.
Jos Stelling uses the diagetic sounds of a train station to underscore his characters’ emotions.. The film's audio however sheds no light on the issue of fantasy versus reality, leaving it open to the viewers’ interpretation.
