Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 15, 1992 TAG: 9202150309
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DISTURBING, `RAPTURE' SURE TO SPARK DEBATE
"The Rapture" certainly treads territory few movies dare.Not only is it sexually bold, it poses questions about the acceptance and rejection of God. And at the same time, it frames its questions with a literal interpretation of Scripture.
It's provocative, disturbing and certain to cause debate among moviegoers.
There are moments of eerie power and one scene almost too painful to watch. Some viewers at this year's Virginia Festival of American Film in Charlottesville indeed found it too painful and headed for the lobby only to return for a discussion at the end.
As intriguing as it is, the movie's technical deficiencies can't be ignored, however.
Novelist Michael Tolkin, who wrote the book on which the movie is based, is the director. Tolkin is not a visually commanding director, and he apparently did not have a large budget. The result is static pacing. And sometimes the storytelling is unclear. His idea of staging a scene is to have actors walk in and out of the camera frame and across rooms. Though he makes the literal interpretation of the Bible important to the story, he makes the mistake of attempting to bring it visually to the screen. The special effects are not state-of-the-art. Nor is the acting always consistent, though Mimi Rogers delivers a wrenching performance.
She plays Sharon, who at the beginning of the movie is a telephone operator who tries to compensate for the emptiness in her life with random sex. Her trolling partner is Vic (Patrick Bauchau), a particularly sleazy guy of indeterminate background. The two haunt bars and airports, picking up strange couples for anonymous group sex.
Sharon starts to hear some buzz around the office about dreams, a boy prophet and a nearing Judgment Day. Apparently, everyone but her is privy to the end of the world and the increasing signs and wonders that signal the Apocalypse. But Sharon begins to absorb some of the information, and she, too, has a revelation. It changes her life and that of one of her boyfriends, and the movie jumps ahead six years. By that time, Sharon is a mother and a devoted proselytizer whose faith, it seems, is unshakable.
Tolkin is dealing with some heavy material here and it gathers a force of its own despite the movie's technical shortcomings. One has to wonder what kind of power it would have achieved with a more sophisticated production. `The Rapture': **1/2 A Fine Line release at the Grandin Theatre (345-6177). Rated R for sexual content and violence. 102 minutes.