Belgian director Lucas Belvaux’s unfortunately-titled yet taut and twisty hostage drama “Rapt,” based on the real life 1978 abduction of a French millionaire, boasts the formal elegance of earlier work like 2002’s ambitious, interlocking “The Trilogy,” (“On the Run,” “An Amazing Couple,” “After the Life”) including an opening series of narrative gambits that set his protagonist into orbit as politician, lover and gambler. But that’s not the best element of this sleek, captivating thriller: Belvaux’s patience as a dramatist rewards the viewer aplenty as the strands of his anti-hero’s life criss, cross, accumulate, detonate. A splendid last half hour impresses mightily. Any resemblance to the hauteur of plutocrats like Dominique Strauss-Kahn resounds to “Rapt”‘s lasting benefit. With Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny, André Marcon, Françoise Fabian. 121m. Widescreen. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
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