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Rapt review
:. Director: Lucas Belvaux
:. Starring: Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny
:. Running Time: 2:05
:. Year: 2009
:. Country: France
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Most of the films that deal with kidnappings usually focus either on the relationship between the victim and his/her kidnappers or on the rescue. They are claustrophobic works plunging us in psychological warfare, with recurring elements such as violence, mental or physical torture, emergence of the Stockholm syndrome, everything culminating with a much-awaited — escape or rescue — finale, where the criminals will get their due, finally bringing us vengeful satisfaction.
While writer/director Lucas Belvaux keeps a couple elements inherent to this subgenre, he delivers a different type of film, focusing instead on the behind the scenes and psychological consequences of a kidnapping. This shouldn't be surprising for a man known as an astute portraitist of human psychology as his An Amazing Couple/On the Run/After Life trilogy can attest.
Somewhat based on the kidnapping of Baron édouard-Jean Empain, Yvan Attal (Munich, The Snake) plays Stanislas Graff, a successful industrialist who gets kidnapped to be exchanged for an important ransom. As we witness his fall, from an arrogant man of power to a broken human being who is barely surviving, we most importantly see the unexpected consequences of his kidnapping. From his partners hesitating to pay his ransom to his family being affected by news about his double life and the police trying to do its job, we realize that he might not be missed that much. And when he comes back, things get even worse, the power of this film being to show us how every character in this story has egoistic motivations: the cops do not want the ransom to be paid and are more interested in catching the criminals than making sure Stanislas makes it out of there alive. His wife and daughters feel betrayed by his infidelities and can't forgive him. His partners take the opportunity of his absence to take control of his group. Rather than exposing all this hypocrisy, having Stanislas confronts all these issues, Mr. Belvaux summarizes everything in one anodyne but powerful scene: once he's out, Stanislas asks to see his dog, with whom he will spend most of his time afterwards — he knows this is his only true and faithful friend, underlining the dehumanization of modern society.
But what also makes Rapt such a haunting work is the fact that Mr. Belvaux does not judge any of his characters. He instead shows us different perspectives, each of them being linked to individual motivations. The director doesn't either try to offer redemption to Stanislas who, after his ordeal, remains cold and cynical — the filmmaker ends the film logically, without answering a central question involving Stanislas' morality.
With its extensive character study, you might expect Rapt to be a slow paced — some would say boring — picture but Mr. Belvaux's tour de force is to actually package all this psychology in a tense and sharp drama, that even features an unexpected burst of violence that would usually find its place in a show like 24. Add convincing performances and you get a rare film, combining the intellectualization of French cinema with the effectiveness of American movies, and making it work.
Fred Thom
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