Movie Review : ‘Rapture’ Travels Down a Lurid Road

Over the years British playwright-screenwriter David Hare has taken grand passions with increasing seriousness, a dangerous development when his plots have come to resemble nothing so much as ‘40s melodramas. Under Howard Davies’ ham-fisted direction, “The Secret Rapture,” Hare’s adaptation of his own play, swiftly descends to the level of lurid soap opera.

Before you think you’ve had a bad day, consider the plight of Juliet Stevenson’s Isobel Coleridge. First, she’s informed that her wanton, manipulative, alcoholic, recently widowed young stepmother Katherine (Joanna Whalley-Kilmer), who sits on the board of her London graphic design firm, has gone spectacularly off the wagon in public and has stabbed a potential client when he tells her he has passed on her company.

Isobel then catches Patrick (Neil Pearson), her live-in lover and business partner, cheating on her; then she’s told off by her rich, cold, bitchy, jealous, obtuse older sister Marion (Penelope Wilton) for failing to control Katherine.

Never mind that it was Marion, in order to escape any responsibility for Katherine, who enlisted Patrick to help her pressure Isobel into accepting the idea that her--Marion’s--husband (Alan Howard) should buy Isobel and Patrick’s small but successful business and expand it greatly so as to give Katherine something to do--she’s supposed to drum up business. All this and much, much more is every bit as ludicrous as it sounds.

It would seem that Hare wants to show us how a seemingly solid romantic and professional partnership such as Isobel and Patrick’s can be undone by her blinding sense of duty to the reckless Katherine and by his vulnerability to the temptation of potential riches offered by Marion’s buyout plan.

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The big trouble is that all the constant shifting in allegiances and attitudes is breathtakingly abrupt and seems imposed from without by Hare rather than coming from within his characters. For example, we can conceive how Patrick could be enthusiastic about Marion’s infusion of capital, but not when it includes Katherine’s sure-to-be-disastrous involvement.

To pull off “The Secret Rapture’s” escalating Sturm und Drang would require the mastery of an R. W. Fassbinder or an Andre Techine, expert in playing against the old women’s picture melodramatics with an affectionate bemusement while taking their heroines seriously and finding meaning in their plights. But this requires a sense of humor, something that in this instance neither Hare nor Davies possesses.

* MPAA rating: R, for strong sexuality and language. Times guidelines: It includes destructive adult behavior and some violence as well as sexual situations. ‘The Secret Rapture’

Juliet Stevenson: Isobel Coleridge

Joanne Whalley-Kilmer: Katherine Coleridge

Penelope Wilton: Marion French

Neil Pearson: Patrick Steadman

A Castle Hill release of a Greenpoint Films production financed by Channel 4 in association with British Screen. Director Howard Davies. Producer Simon Relph. Screenplay by David Hare; from his play. Cinematographer Ian Wilson. Editor George Akers. Costumes Consolata Boyle. Music Richard Hartley. Production designer Barbara Gosnold. Art director Fiona McNeil. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

* Exclusively at the AMC Fine Arts, 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 652-1330.