Rapture (1980)

A very disturbing Spanish cult movie, involving drugs addiction, the dark side of love and the passion of filming. For most of the critics is also a horror movie and a vampires story. And every time you watch it you can find in it something new, indeed.Shooted in the years of the Spanish political and cultural dawn, but going away from the mainstream, and with a very low budget, it drives you from the beginning to the end in so a magnetic and weird plot that you can't stop watching.But Arrebato is also remarkable because of the astonishing performance of the main characters couple, Eusebio Poncela and Cecilia Roth. Most in the claustrophobic atmosphere of their bedroom, it reminds some highlights of Ingmar Bergman films like 'Scener ur ett aktenskapps' o 'Saraband'

From initial ridicule (despite the official recommendation as a quality feature) to flat-out praise, it took more than twenty years to realize the seminal influence of this film on Spanish production, from Almodovar onwards. It draws many influences from the Warhol-esque New York underground scene but has tremendous scenes.Whoever wants to understand what Betty Boop was all about, must see Cecilia Roth dance scene, it is fabulous.Contains a lot of drug addiction references, which should be seen as an analogy to the addiction to capturing moving pictures and watching them. The only way for a film director to get rid of the latter is to dissolve into the industry.

Film maker José Sirgado (Poncela) gets to know amateur film director and freak Pedro though an acquaintance of both. Pedro's bizarre movies and José's personal problems and drug addictions act as the glue that forges a master-pupil relationship, especially when José makes a technical improvement to Pedro's camera that allows interval shooting. All this with some undefined gay twist to their relationship.After the relationship is put to sleep and José is back to his gloomy apartment in Madrid and his drug-driven love relationship with Cecilia Roth, he is surprised to receive a package from Pedro one day. And inside the package, a film and a cassette tape seem to indicate that a vampire lives inside Pedro's Super-8 camera, a vampire that absorbs people and makes them disappear when they are filmed.Could it be true? Or is it just a result of too much drug intake? The story becomes then a vehicle for theorizing on the creative process in arts, the relationship between the artist and his product, and finally the fascination with cinema in our lives ("Arrebato" can be translated as "raptum" and refers to the impact of certain artistic clichés -- King Solomon's mines for Sirgado, Betty Boop for his girlfriend-- in our feelings)As a very thin backdrop to the story, Zulueta portraits an sfumatto of the Spain of the late 70's: a society that used drugs liberally, craved for freedom, and made the way of sexual liberation while challenging the statu quo of decades of dictatorships.

Arrebato by Ivan Zulueta is a wonderful, strange movie. The desire and the magic of cinema full the screen. This extremely beautiful film describes clearly the darkness state of things, the joy and pain of living, taking drugs, being and loving the cinema. A little big jewel to feel.