Rapture (A.K.A. Arebatto) Thought-provoking Spanish Cult Film Finally hits UK Shores(1979)(Review)

“If what I think is going to happen does happen, no-one will send you the last film. You’ll have to come and get it.”

Iván Zulueta’s Arebatto is as self-aware as it is hypnotising. I love the urgency of a film that commits to the container of a delivered film. The protagonist has documented something and must show it to tell their part of a story. Sometimes it’s to document their downfall. Sometimes their salvation.

Arebatto cleverly plays with both personal and artistic expression through the framing of a film within a film. Haunting images of a vampire woman emerging from a coffin set the scene for a journey that interrogates addiction, a metaphysical loss of life and utter human destruction. Zulueta brilliantly lays the groundwork in a scene which sees two filmmakers discuss the vampire’s state of being. She is delighted to be a vampire, although it has its pains.

What Zulueta does so well is infusing his world with clashes of hyper-realism and surrealism which he anchors in the package that our filmmaker extraordinaire José Sirgado (Eusebio Poncela) decides to open finally on a night of drug-addled frustration and disenfranchisement from the film industry. Scenes of New York and popular posters of the time, give us a nostalgia that is broken up as soon as we hear Pedro’s (Will More) voice. Pedro is an eccentric man in his early 20s who narrates a story through the tape delivered to José. This is where Zulueta shines the most, in both script and direction, plunging us into a hallucinatory ride that fades the realism we’ve been holding onto into the background further and further as we see José descend further into his addiction. Firmly in Zulueta’s steady hand and vision, we’re now on distorted ground and we begin to question everything we’re seeing.

A cult classic in his home country of Spain for all the good reasons, Arebatto points a finger at the exploitation of the film industry using the metaphor of drug use. It’s more layered than this if we scratch beneath the surface though. It both points a finger and merely documents. Zulueta has seamlessly fit the role of both philosopher and mere observer, capturing the self-degradation and grief of the characters. He both alludes to the film industry being exploitative and a cesspool for the most insecure and obsession-prone people and questions us; Doesn’t everyone have a responsibility though?

José’s on and off again girlfriend (Cecila Roth) serves as both José’s enabler and a metaphor for high-pressure film execs and the grind of making it in the film industry. The industry has very little care for your well-being unless they can make it into the next biggest story. Your films are worth more with you dead or insane. But the star of the show is the elusive Pedro. Pedro captures everything he sees, making a time-lapse of his life. He has the intensity of One Hour Photo’s Sy and the heated undercurrents of a Norman Bates, making the meeting between José and Pedro, one already riddled with disaster.

When they meet, the disintegration of Pedro is ultimately linked to the “rapture” or “Arrebato” he faces a trance that comes over him whenever he films things he’s never seen before. When drugs overtake him. When he sees something from his childhood. His rapture is both destructive and capable of leaving him in a state of childish wonder.

In this, Zulueta lays down a double-edged sword. He doesn’t prescribe anything for us and certainly doesn’t hint at any point why José and Pedro actually have an interest in each other. He never tells us why these hallucinations are happening. However, his tactile and forthright directing style leaves us immersed in a world of a functioning addict, who perhaps, is trying to keep a connection with the world, as he slowly loses his mind. José could be a conduit to the real world and a dream world, the film world, that Pedro is interested in. Inter-dispersed with film stock footage, Pedro is stuck in a world under utter submission, but one that he has contributed to making, as has José. Needles piercing skin. The vampiric woman. They work together to make a visceral form of visual expression that has to go one step further. It has to be felt, deep in the recesses of the guts.

Arrebato is a deeply wonderful inspection of an addict’s humanity. Both dream-like and ultimately as real as a thought that wakes you in the early hours of the morning, Zulueta makes a stance on our own cruxes and vices, the free-walk into oblivion without marking out the steps for us to take.

It’s the first one of his works that I have seen, and I would say it’s a must-watch for those who like close-cut examinations of human taboos and flawed humans framed perfectly against the backdrop of an artist’s declaration that the process of film-making can be as addictive and mind-blowing as knowingly injecting your veins with something that is going to kill you. Before you die though, you may just see the world in a way never seen before. Such is the process of being an artist.

Sammy’s Archive: Arebatto