Plot: "Set against the rugged beauty of the Brittany seacoast, it tells the story of a young girl whose lonely isolation under the watchful eye of her stern and bitter father is abruptly shattered by the arrival of a seductive fugitive from the law."
'Rapture' is a coming-of-age tale, a dark Gothic fantasy, a romance, a bit of a melodrama, and maybe a few other things. Its ability to stay clear from clichés despite the familiar dramatic framework alone is astonishing, which makes the film ultimately pretty uncategorizable, not to say anything about how sensible and dare I say perfect everything else is about this relatively layered production that feels grounded in realism while often being quite magical thanks partly due to the script, and partly due to its beautiful dreamy score and arresting as well as intelligent compositions of its CinemaScope black and white cinematography.
Its nationality isn't easily identifiable either. The spoken language is English, the writer of the source novel is British, as is the director, but he was born to French parents, the film (unlike the novel) is set in France and most of the crew is French, as is the main actress. Its overall feel is predominantly French but it definitely also has British and American touches and there's something Bergmanesque about it as well as it often plays like a chamber psychodrama and with Bergman regular Gunnel Lindblom in the cast providing a direct link to the Swedish auteur. Speaking of actors, although without big stars the main players are all recognizable faces who fit their roles excellently and all of which give very good performances with the memorable standout being French actress Patricia Gozzi as the young girl, she bowed out of acting only a few years later but if you happen to have seen 'Sundays and Cybele' you certainly will remember her from that movie.
There are many films I could compare it to, but no comparison would be exhaustive. The enigmatic stranger who enters a family with each person projecting their own desires onto him and them essentially creating their own image of the man is an important element in the film that recalls Pasolini's 'Teorema'. Then there's an impressive section later in the film in which the girl finds herself in Paris for the first time and she is completely overwhelmed by her surroundings and the situation in general, which has something of the same year's 'Repulsion'. In fact I think I saw Catherine Deneuve rubbing her nose in the background in one of the shots...OK, I didn't. Anyway, those comparisons are just scratching the surface.
I'm not really sure to whom I would recommend 'Rapture', but if my genre description made it sound like your kind of thing you may want to look into it. Especially if you loved Chan-wook Park's 'Stoker', I think there are a few similarities between them with a general oddness that is not only captivating with its complex web of character relationships but also feels perfectly natural to the material, in particular thanks to its mentally troubled young protagonist on the brink of sexual awakening who is like a warmer but also more visibly unhinged version of India Stoker with the actress very much having the same strange appeal as Mia Wasikowska as well as the acting chops to go with it.
Although understandably not the kind of film with a huge mainstream appeal 'Rapture' apparently never even saw all that much of a release back in the 60's. The handful of reviews that I found (all written within the past few years) amazingly enough are unanimously very positive, which strengthens me in my belief that this is a gem still waiting to be discovered by a much wider audience. It's only now that the film sees its first wide home video release by the UK label Eureka, so maybe now its time has finally come.
