From its opening frame, first sound, _The Rapture_ exudes a religious solemnity, a crime-and-punishment moral tale vibe. The spare score sounds like a cross between Arvo Part and the "Courtroom" theme Zbignew Preisner composed for Kieslowski's _White_. A male narrator meditates, seemingly from far away, the breakup of a couple with intimations of a criminal trial. Indeed the film will update the "Dekalog 7" baby-theft story with a female perspective (whether director Iris Kaltenback has seen the Kieslowski opus or not). It is a woman's picture in the best sense of the term, the reason we need more female directors and their unique stories; a good part of the film indeed takes place in maternity wards.
Lydia is a midwife and a fantasist, quick to make up backstories about redheads in museum paintings. Despite the glamor of Hafsia Herzi playing her, she is the typical cinematic loner with no family and only one friend. Salome suffers from postpartum depression; Lydia not just babysits her best friend's daughter, she even chooses her name. Esmee, "beloved." One day Milos, the Serbian exile, bus-driver, and narrator with whom Lydia has had a one-night stand, walks into her hospital and sees her with the baby. Things slowly spiral out of control from there.
Herzi is marvelously subdued and draws the audience slowly into Lydia's story, even if the character remains an enigma. She saves her big emotions for the heart-wrenching surrender scene in a seaside hotel. But when she makes up stories on the spot or dances in a nightclub, you see the understated effervescence that propelled Herzi to stardom in _The Secret of the Grain_. Nina Meurisse is wonderful as Salome too.
The true stars of the film are however Kaltenback and her technical team. Every single scene is so beautifully rendered. The nighttime bus rides, spectral red lights reflected in the windows could have been shot by Agnes Godard or Piotr Sobocinski. (The cinematographer is actually Marine Atlan, a young director in her own right). The indoor scenes with their primary color palettes are composed like Matisse, or occasionally lighted like Old Master paintings. The classicism is particularly striking given that both protagonists have immigrant roots. Even the hospital scenes have beautiful, if functional, set designs; there is never a throwaway shot. The iris fade outs recall Truffaut, whom Kaltenback cites as an influence in interviews. Lydia's striking all-red jacket, which anchors the film's red-on-scarlet poster, may be the character's cry for attention, but it also foreshadows Lydia's fate as a solemn penitent. There is texture and depth in every image. As if to underscore Kaltenback painterly composition gift, a key scene takes place among the painted redheads in the Jean-Jacques Henner Museum in Paris, which I have wanted to visit for almost a decade. The director has extraordinary taste and talent to burn; one day she will write a screenplay that matches her visual mastery, and her film will blow everyone away at a major film festival.
