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{{Short description|1979 Spanish art house horror film by Iván Zulueta}}
{{Infobox film
| name           = Arrebato
| image          = Arrebato poster.jpg
| alt            = Rapture (English title)
| caption        = Original Spanish release poster
| director       = [[Iván Zulueta]]
| producer       = [[Nicolás Astiarraga]]
| starring       = [[Eusebio Poncela]]<br />[[Cecilia Roth]]<br />[[Will More]]<br />[[Marta Fernández Muro]]<br />[[Carmen Giralt]]<br />[[Helena Fernán-Gómez]]
| music          = [[Negativo]]<br />Iván Zulueta
| cinematography = [[Ángel Luis Fernández]]
| editing        = [[José Luis Peláez]]<br />[[José Pérez Luna]]<br />[[María Elena Sáinz de Rozas]]
| distributor    =
| released       = {{Film date|1980|06|09|[[Spain]]|df=yes}}
| runtime        = 105 minutes
| country        = Spain
| language       = [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| budget         =
}}
'''''Arrebato''''' ({{IPA|es|areˈβato|}}, "Rapture") is a 1979 Spanish [[art film|art house]] [[horror film]] written and directed by [[Ivan Zulueta]]. It is Zulueta's only feature film and is considered to be a cult classic of [[Cinema of Spain|Spanish Cinema]] and is counted as part of the art movement ''[[La Movida Madrileña]]''.
==Plot==
José Sirgado ([[Eusebio Poncela]]) is a frustrated horror film director and [[heroin]] addict in a tumultuous relationship with Ana Turner ([[Cecilia Roth]]). The cousin of his ex-girlfriend Marta, Pedro (Will More), sends him a reel of film, an [[audio cassette]], and the key to his apartment despite the fact that the two have only met twice. As José and Ana listen, the audio cassette narrates the two occasions when the two men met. These occasions are shown in flashback. The first occasion was when José came with Marta to scout the family's home for a filming location. Pedro, an obsessive maker of [[homemade film]]s, snorts heroin with José and asks if he knows how to film [[time-lapse photography]]. Pedro shows José his home movies, which he has never shown to anyone. Later, José, mails Pedro an interval timer that would control his camera's shutter, shooting at specified intervals.
The second occasion the two men met, José returns with Ana to watch Pedro's films, and Pedro gives Ana a [[Betty Boop]] doll that had apparently been hers as a child. Later, José and Ana, remembering this visit, decide to watch the mysterious reel of film while listening to the rest of the audio cassette. On the tape, Pedro describes his life after receiving the interval timer. Pedro explains that one night after falling asleep he discovered that his camera turned on by itself and filmed him. After developing the film, he discovers a single red frame in which the camera has lost the image of his sleeping. Curious, Pedro allows the camera to film him multiple times as he sleeps, only to discover that the red still frames are growing in number. Pedro discovers that if he does not film himself during sleep, he experiences withdrawal symptoms, similar to heroin withdrawal. Upon waking from these filmed sleeps, Pedro feels revitalized, "enraptured", and becomes convinced that whatever happens during the red portion of the film is responsible for this feeling. Unsure of what the frames mean, he asks his cousin Marta to watch him as he sleeps. As she watches one of his films, the camera moves on its own to face Marta, who disappears. When he only has one more frame left before the entire film becomes red.
Pedro sends the film, his audio instructions, and the key to José, instructing him to come to his apartment and develop the final film. José complies, finding the apartment empty, and discovers the film to be entirely red except for one frame of Pedro's face. The image begins to move, with Pedro gesturing towards the bed with a subtle smile, implying that José should also let the camera film him as he sleeps; the image becomes blurred and then changes into José's own face, which makes a similar gesture. The final scene of the film finds José getting into Pedro's bed to experience the same "rapture" as his friend.<ref>Mira, Alberto. "The Dark Heart of the Movida: Vampire Fantasies in Iván Zulueta's Arrebato". Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Volume 13, 2009, pp. 155-169.</ref>
==Cast==
* [[Eusebio Poncela]] as José Sirgado
* [[Cecilia Roth]] as Ana Turner
* Will More as Pedro
* Marta Fernández Muro as Marta
* Helena Fernán-Gómez as Gloria
* Carmen Giralt as Tía Carmen
* Max Madera as Chapero
== Development ==
Director Ivan Zulueta himself was a heroin addict since before he started developing the film and this influenced the film's concept strongly.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Soufi |first=Daniel |date=2023-01-25 |title=Arrebato: por qué la película maldita de la Transición ha conquistado a los veinteañeros |url=https://elpais.com/icon/2023-01-25/los-jovenes-de-hoy-saben-leer-arrebato-mucho-mejor-que-nosotros-como-una-pelicula-maldita-conquisto-a-una-nueva-generacion.html |access-date=2023-06-17 |website=El País |language=es}}</ref> The film was produced in 1979.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Ehrlicher |first=Hanno |title=Iván Zulueta, ''Arrebato'' |work=Große Werke des Films 1 |publisher=Francke |year=2015 |isbn=978-3-7720-8567-3 |pages=211–213}}</ref>
Zulueta cast [[Pedro Almodóvar]] in a small voice acting role. Almodóvar provides a voice dub invoking an exaggerated femininity for the character of Gloria, which is played by Helena Fernán-Gómez.<ref name=":1" />
==Release==
The film was initially not a commercial success, but got a good response from film critics and subsequently became a cult favorite and a classic cinema according to ''[[El País]]''. The film had its premiere on 9 June 1980 in the Cine Azul in [[Madrid]], but was shown for only 13 days.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Arrebato / Rapture |url=https://roderic.uv.es/bitstream/handle/10550/37251/Arrebato%20Rapture%20%282005%29.pdf?sequence=1 |website=The Cinema of Spain and Portugal}}</ref> A few months after this, the cinema Alphaville in Madrid showed the film during [[midnight movie]] screenings for a year.<ref name=":2" /> The film was still relatively little seen until it gained a wider spectatorship with a DVD release in the 2000s.<ref name=":1" />
===Critical response===
[[Ángel Fernández-Santos]] wrote in the newspaper ''El País'': “Arrebato is a dark moment of pessimism. It is intricate cinema, unfathomable at some point of its crooked and tumultuous route. And it is, above all, cinema in living meat, disturbing, painful and elevated."<ref name=":0" />
Jorge Fidalgo from ''CineDivergente.com'' praised the film, comparing it to [[Ingmar Bergman]]'s ''[[Persona (1966 film)|Persona]]'', writing, "Iván Zulueta, as did Bergman with ''Persona'', moves away from the thematic and technical assumptions of conventional cinema, and chooses to play freely with the elements of audiovisual language, making ''Arrebato'' a challenge for film exegesis and a quasi-lysergic experience for the spectators."<ref name="cinedivergente">{{cite web |last1=Fidalgo |first1=Jorge |title=Persona y Arrebato |url=http://cinedivergente.com/ensayos/estudios/el-mito-del-vampiro-en-persona-y-arrebato |website=CineDivergente.com |publisher=Jorge Fidalgo |accessdate=11 May 2019 |language=Spanish}}</ref>
''[[Time Out (magazine)|Time Out]]'' gave the film a positive review, calling it "A hallucinatory, claustrophobic examination of the secret potency of film itself".<ref name="timeoutreview">{{cite web |title=Arrebato, directed by Iván Zulueta |url=https://www.timeout.com/london/film/arrebato-1979 |website=Time Out.com |publisher=Time Out London |accessdate=11 May 2019}}</ref> Annie Choi from ''The Bleeding Skull'' gave the film a mostly positive review, praising the film's cinematography, mood, and director Zulueta's building of tension, while criticizing the film's uncompelling characters, "taxing" narration, and "inscrutable" plot.<ref name="bleedingskullrev">{{cite web |last1=Choi |first1=Annie |title=Arrebato (1979) – BLEEDING SKULL! |url=http://bleedingskull.com/arrebato-1979/ |website=Bleeding Skull.com |publisher=Annie Choi |accessdate=11 May 2019}}</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==External links==
* {{AllMovie title|148410|Arrebato}}
* {{IMDb title|id=0078797|title= Arrebato}}
* {{Rotten tomatoes|arrebato|Arrebato}}
[[Category:1980 films]]
[[Category:1980s avant-garde and experimental films]]
[[Category:1980s horror drama films]]
[[Category:Films about filmmaking]]
[[Category:Madrid in fiction]]
[[Category:Spanish horror drama films]]
[[Category:1980s Spanish-language films]]
[[Category:Spain in fiction]]
[[Category:Spanish avant-garde and experimental films]]
[[Category:1980 drama films]]