Considering the delighted response it elicited at its Cinematheque screening last week, it’s understandable that Stephen Teo (senses of cinema) has described Otto Preminger’s Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) as an “underrated masterpiece”. A critical and commercial failure upon its release, the film does occasionally veer in the direction of camp (see: the leering landlord played by Noel Coward,who assumably spent his off-screen time flossing bits of scenery from his teeth). Yet Bunny Lake ultimately offers an absorbing and deeply unsettling depiction of madness, one that merits far more critical attention and acclaim than it seems to have garnered.

Bunny Lake shares much in common with the second half of the Cinematheque double-bill, Michelangelo Antonioni’s oft discussed and lavishly praised Blow-Up (1966); both films are psychological studies that cast doubt on their protagonist or central event. Here, American expat Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) drops her daughter Bunny off at school. When she arrives to pick her up, Bunny is nowhere to be found; moreover, no one at the school remembers seeing her. A search for the child commences, spearheaded by Inspector Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) and aided by Ann’s protective older brother Steven (Keir Dullea), but no clues are unearthed. Newhouse begins to doubt the child’s existence, and the focus of the investigation shifts from Bunny’s whereabouts to the mental state of her mother.

Strikingly, while Ann's sanity is ostensibly the focus of the film, none of the characters in Bunny Lake seem to have a firm grasp on reality. There are obvious examples of eccentricity; for example, Martita Hunt’s retired schoolteacher who studies recordings of children’s nightmares. But there are less overt examples as well; consider Anna Massey’s pursed-lipped schoolmarm, who responds to the news of a missing child not with horror at her own negligence but with irritation at the inconvenience of it. As the film progresses, we see that the London of Bunny Lake is overrun by bizarre characters whose behavior is at best unusual.

Preminger heightens the discomfiting feel of these characters’ interactions through his taut, theatrical staging. Positioning his actors in stark, angular compositions, Preminger lends an unnatural and disconnected sensibility to the scenes, suggesting that while the characters may interact, they do not communicate. Even Ann and Steven’s scenes together reflect a lack of actual affection or warmth. In one scene, Steven soaks in the bathtub, offering halfhearted sentiments to cheer his sister, and Ann perches on its side, musing to herself; despite their apparent closeness, their comments do not even seem to register with one another.

Naïve, incapable, affectless, Ann Lake is the enigma at the center of this hostile world. Her issues and eccentricities are alluded to but never fully explained-- or worse, explained away. Ann's sanity is by no means confirmed by the film's dizzying finale; any edge she might possess, we sense, is only relative to the panoply of oddballs that surround her. And, in honesty, an absolute confirmation of her sanity would still be cold comfort; after all, she would still be marooned in the middle of a disconnected, dissonant landscape.

In that sense, the film's final shot is deeply unnerving. A shell-shocked Ann carries Bunny away past Steven being loaded into a police car. (This would seem to merit a spoiler alert tag, but even the least astute filmgoer will sense something awry with the doting big brother, thanks to Dullea's wide-eyed and potent performance). As she stumbles off into who-knows-where, a hand gently folds a paper cut-out of a little girl back into place, bringing the screen to black. This gesture signals a conclusion to the film, but not necessarily to the narrative; although BunnyLake has been found, the mental state of her mother troublingly remains unclear, and where they will go next is unknown. But Preminger has blocked our peep-hole into the weird world of Bunny Lake. We have no choice but to leave-- to ponder, debate and try to come to grips with what we have seen.

It is this ambiguity—all the troubling, tantalizing mysteries that the film unearths but leaves unresolved-- that makes Bunny Lake so profoundly unsettling. Ultimately, this film, like Blow-Up, isn't really about what actually happened, or whether its protagonists are crazy or not. As is powerfully articulated in the credit sequences of both films, which play with superimposition and visual effects to suggest ‘what lies beneath', Bunny Lake and Blow-Up are more films about our fear of the darkness that lurks around us; our fear of unearthing something awful that reveals how sordid and sinister the world can be. Preminger masterfully peels back the cover to expose us to that darkness, like picking up a rock to reveal the grubs that writhe in the earth below.