THE RAPTURE
A film review by Jeff Davis
Copyright 1992 Jeff Davis
A friend of mine and I took in THE RAPTURE last night at the newly opened Kentucky Theater here in Lexington. The 7:30 show was delayed for more than fifteen minutes to accommodate the large crowd of almost 800 people. This is the second movie I've seen recently at the Kentucky--the first was SINGING IN THE RAIN--and it is as large a contrast in movies as could fit in my squeegeed psyche. THE RAPTURE is an odd-ball movie. Imagine MY DINNER WITH ANDRE with Billy Graham and Albert Camus: MY LAST SUPPER WITH ANDRE, maybe. Mimi Rodgers stars as a telephone information operator who handles four calls a minute, eight hours a day. After work, she clears out the cobwebs with a (male) friend of hers by picking up strange couples in bars. This is not a Good Thing and we see it pall on her. At work, she overhears some Born Again Christians talking about their Secrets and little by little she becomes hooked. Rodgers is fine at projecting the iciness of this woman. At one point in a sexual encounter while her partner is all sweaty with bump and grimace, she wiltingly enquires about the prominent tattoo which her partner's female friend displays, and her voice betrays less involvement in the proceedings than her, "Please hold for the number" at work. Rodger's shows us a woman intent on convincing herself she's human. The bulk of the movie is her involvement in the rigors and terrors and logical consequences of her hard won faith, but to get too explicit about that would tread into "spoilers."
There is a large amount of the movie which is locked into working out the dialectics of the Born Again movement, like the Grand Inquisitor from THE BROTHERS KARAMOZOV. I didn't much care for that angle although taking the Born Again movement and its belief's seriously (taking *any* religion seriously) has not been a strong point in Hollywood film making.
As for an evaluation: I liked the film. Its subject matter was fresh although the director (Michael (?) Tolkin) apparently has a burr-in-the-blanket fascination with Christianity rather than an actual involvement. I don't know if that isn't actually some kind of Faith.