Kidnapping and Back-Channel Plotting in the Suave, Cynical Rapt
by Mark Asch
Rapt
Directed by Lucas Belvaux
As Stanislas Graff, the second-generation head of a French industrial concern, Yvan Attal, in the early scenes of Rapt, swipes pen across paper and politely excuses himself early from lunch with an arrogant efficiency#&8212;he even has a hound, like some medieval squire. When he's kidnapped, no one can believe he's as cash-poor as he says he is#&8212;not his family, not his masked captors#&8212;in a nice jab at Eurozone overleverage. Writer-director Lucas Belvaux, whose 2002 "Trilogy" comprises three overlapping stories in three different genres, distributes information asymmetrically across the weakening victim; his two sets of abductors, brutish and then debonair; his cosseted teen daughters, poisonously regal mother, and wife (Anne Consigny, modeling skinny-rich-lady chic attire to maintain a sense of security); the police, angling for a high-profile case; the boardroom jockeys trying to retain control of the situation; and the offscreen media, which lead week after week with Graff's young mistresses and millions in gambling losses. We share Belvaux's god's-eye-view of everyone's logistical plotting, the better to appreciate the suave, cynical way he stages the intricately interlocking ironies and widening misperceptions#&8212;as well as several handoffs of men and money, including one particularly elaborate and decisive bit of choreography on a high-speed train, a la Kurosawa's High and Low.
Opens July 6
