Arrebato
For some people, cinema is a drug. You just have to have new moving images flowing around in your psyche, and it can alter your way of looking at the world. I feel that to a certain extent, but I don’t get withdrawal if that high isn’t achieved in a while. In “Arrebato (Rapture),” one filmmaker shares his experience of achieving that high with another. I get why Pedro Almodovar loves this film; there are stretches where it feels tedious and too mired in exposition for me, but the moments that connect, they really leave a mark.
Jose (Eusebio Poncela) is a shlocky filmmaker who is finishing up his latest feature. He has a great, evocative image for his ending but he isn’t interested in using it- he wants to fade out. His editor just doesn’t want him to come back on Monday with his mind changed. When he gets home, there’s a woman and a package in his apartment. The woman is Ana (Cecilia Roth), his girlfriend; their relationship has been rocky for a while- their heroin use no doubt contributes. The package is from Pedro (Will More), a filmmaker that Jose met twice while scouting locations. What is contained is a new experimental film of Pedro’s, as well as an audio cassette, detailing Pedro’s perspective of their two meetings.
Writer-director Iván Zulueta uses a flashback structure for his film, and that can be dicey, because you also have to tell a narrative. That’s a big part of my issue with “Arrebato”- I don’t feel like a narrative has been presented to me by the end. If the film felt genuinely episodic, I would understand, but it feels like a stand still, waiting for something to happen when Jose is presented this film by Pedro. We get so much of the past and events that have nothing to do with Jose that it makes it difficult to maintain our interest. I’ve seen people who compare it to Bergman’s “Persona,” and I can certainly see where the comparison comes from, but where’s the story that goes with that hook? I feel like “Arrebato” is the outline of a great horror movie rather than being one in its own right.
Drug use is a big part of “Arrebato,” and if there’s something the film succeeds at, it’s illuminating how powerful of a high finding something new and unusual in film can be. Pedro is intoxicated with the images he’s been able to put on-screen, and he needs to share that with another artist. He senses Jose isn’t as intoxicated with his images, though, and that’s a great hook if you’re going to do something akin to “Persona”- one director can only get high using drugs, the other one through cinema, and the latter tries to bring that cinematic high to the former- but Jose is barely a character. We see him listening to Pedro’s words, but we don’t get much in terms of his perspective on the events they went to together. That’s the main way this would work, but Pedro is the dominant character in the film. Jose is someone for him to project on, and that doesn’t work if the film is going to work, I think.
That said, there is a passage of the film where “Arrebato” really shows what might have been, and it’s when Pedro experiments with filming himself as he sleeps. If the film had started here, and built a mystery off of that, I probably would have loved it more than I did. There are images that are fascinating and concepts that point to one person leading the other down a rabbit hole they shouldn’t go to. Unfortunately, the movie ends when it feels as though it’s just picking up. In this stretch of film, I feel that rapturous high Pedro feels. When the credits roll, it’s a hard fall.
