Arrebato

Jose, a director of schlock horror films, is a high-functioning heroin addict who's experiencing a burnout phase in his career, and frustration over a rocky, on-again/off-again relationship he can't seem to terminate. He receives an unexpected parcel from a fleeting acquaintance named Pedro, a cousin of an old flame, who makes raw naturalistic films variably similar to the works of STAN BRAKHAGE. The parcel contains a filmreel, Pedro's housekey, and a cassette tape on which he's recorded himself expounding a bizarre personal odyssey which initialized at a time when Jose had assisted him in matters of interval time filming. The fervid, gravelly-voiced storytelling spans the film's remaining duration, cryptically implying that Pedro's Super8 camera has taken on a predatory sentience vaguely vampiric in nature...by sucking people away from the Earthly plane, and into the cinematic one(a metamorphosis which Pedro insists is sublimely blissful). This outlandish disclosure is confirmed when Jose watches the filmreel, at which point he realizes why Pedro had sent him the key to his apartment. It is there that Jose will face his ordained destiny under the officious eye of Pedro's camera.

That ARREBATO comes from a director with such a minimal body of work is surprising...it's a professionally appointed abstraction which is comparable to little else, though touches of LYNCH, CRONENBERG, and ECKHART SCHMIDT are sometimes evident. It's a cynical, allegorical, and occasionally plaintive excursion into a dreary alternate reality, underscored with notes of homoerotic suggestion, heroin chic, and pointed political commentary.

There's an intriguing mystery in Pedro's prolonged tape-recorded anecdotes...it's an abstruse and strangely tantalizing expository device which juxtaposes the film's deliberately dallying visual tedium. Narcotics are a preponderance of the proceedings, chiefly regarding their potency to electrify creative vitality while simultaneously draining it dry. I might argue that the "vampire" of the story isn't the actual, tangible camera...rather, it is cinema itself. More specifically, it's the ART of cinema, which, like a god, casts judgment in accordance with one's personal filmic refinements (**spoiler**) It would seem that Pedro has been raptured to a higher plane of existence, owing to his impassioned visionary buoyancy. Jose, conversely, has lost that creative brio, and is thus rendered unworthy or ineligible for ascension. He is denied passage, and promptly exterminated.

As extravagantly outré as it is, ARREBATO is handled quite confidently, and the key players vitalize their characters with moxie. Sure, it's blemished, and certainly not for all tastes, but it's audaciously and undeniably sui generis. That's mighty refreshing in a time when remakes of remakes are the order of the day.

7/10...a worthy legacy for its late director, whose too-brief life is said to have had many unfortunate parallels with this film.

From initial ridicule (despite the official recommendation as a quality feature) to flat-out praise, it took more than twenty years to realize the seminal influence of this film on Spanish production, from Almodovar onwards. It draws many influences from the Warhol-esque New York underground scene but has tremendous scenes.

Whoever wants to understand what Betty Boop was all about, must see Cecilia Roth dance scene, it is fabulous.

Contains a lot of drug addiction references, which should be seen as an analogy to the addiction to capturing moving pictures and watching them. The only way for a film director to get rid of the latter is to dissolve into the industry.

Iván Zulueta, the madman responsible for Los Brincos' Contrabando album art wasn't just into art; he was mainlining the stuff. His debut flick, "Arrebato", isn't just batting its eyelashes at the medium; it's a full-on, drug-fuelled ménage à trois, a wild ride that transports you straight into Zulueta's transgressive cinema.. We're talking about a movie that flips the bird to narrative rules, opting instead for a glorious, unhinged freefall.

Our dubious hero on this descent into chaos is José (Eusebio Poncela), a horror director whose sunken cheeks and nicotine-stained fingers are a testament to his chosen lifestyle of editing cinematic garbage between heroin power naps. He tumbles headfirst into the bizarre world of Pedro (Will More), a peculiar acquaintance who drops a bombshell in José's mailbox: a confession tape, an audio diary charting Pedro's ever-deepening, almost vampiric love affair with film itself.

From that moment on, it's a tight, airless journey where reality and hallucination start doing a dizzying dance. A relentless tide of heroin pulls José and his on-again, off-again squeeze, Ana* (Cecilia Roth), deeper into its clutches. Zulueta shoots this like someone who's stared into the abyss and found a movie camera. Every frame practically oozes. The camera practically salivates over José's veins as he ties off. Pedro's homemade films hiccup and sputter, punctuated by jarring flashes of red-like celluloid actually bleeding. There's sex, but it's all clammy skin and fumbled attempts at connection. A threesome in an elevator that feels less like an erotic fantasy and more like a macabre dissection.

Pedro isn't just filming; he's striking a Faustian bargain. The camera sips his time, his sanity, his very life force. By the time the credits roll, he's not just behind the lens; he's become the lens. José, of course, follows suit. Because what is addiction, really, if not trading your mortal coil for a sublime, fleeting rush? Zulueta knew this intimately; he was deep in his own addiction when he brought this beast to life.

Ultimately, "Arrebato" delivers a truly singular and unforgettable experience-a straight-up Lynchian odyssey through the darkest back alleys of cinematic obsession. It's where the camera itself morphs into a hungry, vampiric entity, draining the very essence from anyone brave enough to fall under its spell. When it all clicks-when Pedro's flickering films and José's dissolving face meld into the reel-it's more than just cinema. As one character so eloquently puts it, perfectly capturing the film's twisted heart: "All my life, it was like a huge wank without cum."

A very disturbing Spanish cult movie, involving drugs addiction, the dark side of love and the passion of filming. For most of the critics is also a horror movie and a vampires story. And every time you watch it you can find in it something new, indeed.

Shooted in the years of the Spanish political and cultural dawn, but going away from the mainstream, and with a very low budget, it drives you from the beginning to the end in so a magnetic and weird plot that you can't stop watching.

But Arrebato is also remarkable because of the astonishing performance of the main characters couple, Eusebio Poncela and Cecilia Roth. Most in the claustrophobic atmosphere of their bedroom, it reminds some highlights of Ingmar Bergman films like 'Scener ur ett aktenskapps' o 'Saraband'

José Sirgado (Eusebio Poncela) is a frustrated horror film director of short budget stories and heroin addict in a thunderous relationship with Ana Turner (Cecilia Roth) . The cousin of his ex-girlfriend Marta (Marta Fernandez Muro) , outcast 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 . The strange Pedro, who is an obsessive maker of homemade films , snorts heroin with José and asks if he knows how to film time-lapse photography. Pedro shows José his home movie s, which he has never shown to anyone . Later on , José , mails Pedro an interval timer that would control his camera's shutter, shooting at specified intervals . Shortly after , the rare and offbeat Pedro is suddenly missing . As the druggie filmmaker will investigate what happened with the author while shooting his brief consciousness during drug abuse which subsequently disappeared. The research will lead the characters to fall deeper in drugs addiction.

A plain and simple plot dealing with a short budget horror filmmaker gets in touch with an eccentric young who is attempting to shoot weird movies becomes into a confuse yarn in David Lynch style resulting in a quasi-lysergic experience for the spectators . This is a ¨cult movie¨ deemed to be the fundamental and essential film of the ¨Spanish Movida¨ of the late 70s and early 80s that took place mainly in Madrid , and away from the thematic and technical assumptions of conventional cinema . The picture chooses to play freely with the elements of audiovisual language with a claustrophobic examination of the secret potency of shoot itself with astonishing time-lapse frames . It results to be a challenge for movie exegesis , that's why some reviewers panned extremely the film because of it contains uncompelling characters and "inscrutable" screenplay . Trio starring : Eusebio Poncela , Will More , Cecilia Roth , giving nice acting . They are accompanied by brief appearances and cameos from Elena Fernán Gómez , Luis Ciges , Alaska , Pedro Almodovar , some of the uncredited. Special mention for the film's cinematography by Angel Luis Fernández , mood , strange musical score and director Zulueta's building of tension . It packs an atmospheric and eerie soundtrack by Negativo and Iván Zulueta himself but uncredited , adding fragments from Siegfried's Funeral March written by Richard Wagner and a song : I Want You, I Need You, I Love You written by Ira Kosloff and performed by Cecilia Roth .

The picture was original but rarely directed by Iván Zulueta . Iván was born in 1943 and died 2009 in Donostia-San Sebastián, Guipúzcoa, País Vasco, Spain . He was a director and writer, especially known for this Arrebato (1979) , Un, dos, tres... al escondite inglés (1970) and a lot of shorts as A mal gam (1976) Frank Stein , Masaje , Kinkón, among others . Zulueta with Arrebato won several nominations and prizes as Chicago International Film Festival 1980 Nominee Gold Hugo Best Feature Iván Zulueta ; Fantasporto 1982 Winner Critics' Award Iván Zulueta Winner International Fantasy Film Award Best Screenplay Iván Zulueta Best Actor Eusebio Poncela ; Nominee International Fantasy Film Award Best Film Iván Zulueta and Mystfest 1980 Nominee Best Film Iván Zulueta. Rating : 6.5/10 . The flick will appeal to ¨Cult Movies¨fans. .