Yvan Attal Keeps Attention ‘Rapt’ in Chilling Drama

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Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – The kidnapped industrialist is pretty sure that he heard the voice somewhere before. He’s just not sure where. Perhaps it was at a poker game. Perhaps it belonged to one of the faceless men that watched stealthily as he recklessly risked his fortune on the gambling table. Now the odds are clearly stacked against the industrialist, who hears the familiar voice coming from the masked face of his captor.
 
That’s the enticing setup for “Rapt,” an abduction thriller that gets more interesting as it glides along, culminating in a final half hour that achieves an altogether different and more resonant darkness. Belgian filmmaker Lucas Belvaux loosely based his original screenplay on the 1978 abduction of Baron Édouard-Jean Empain, and anyone familiar with the baron’s story will more or less know the outcome of this tense yarn.
 
Yet Belvaux’s signature versatility enables him to skillfully meld the genres of suspense thriller and domestic drama. The plot is not a conventional whodunit and does not hinge on the identities of the ruthless thugs. Belvaux is much more interested in the complex identity of the industrialist, Stanislas Graff (Yval Attal), and the secret lives he withheld from the eyes of the public, his co-workers and his own family. The more that’s revealed about Graff’s womanizing and deceitful character, the more intriguing the picture becomes. The real question isn’t whether Graff will be saved, but whether he’s worth saving at all. Unfortunately, it takes a bit too long for the film to get to this point, and an excessive amount of the running time consists of familiar scenes involving ominous phone calls, attempted ransom payments, claustrophobic torture and a great deal of moody discussion between investigators. Attal has little to do but tremble and wince for the film’s first two-thirds, yet once his performance is finally given the opportunity to shine, “Rapt” transcends its own subject matter and becomes a more haunting character portrait than one may have expected.

Yvan Attal is confronted by his kidnappers in Lucas Belvaux’s Rapt.
Photo credit: Kino Lorber, Inc.

Without giving too much away, it must be said that the slender Attal’s physical transformation emerges as an object of morbid fascination. In the film’s production notes, Attal admits that he lost nearly 45 pounds for the role, and his gaunt features easily create the film’s most singularly memorable image. With the threat of death ever in his midst, the incarcerated Attal takes nearly as much abuse as his girlfriend Charlotte Gainsbourg did in “Antichrist.” Yet his suffering is mainly of a psychological nature, save for the early scene where the thugs amputate one of his fingers, one of many plot points undoubtedly inspired by the plight of Baron Empain. Equally painful are the scenes involving Graff’s wife (Anne Consigny) as she attempts to justify her husband’s indefensible infidelities to her two daughters. Consigny has played a series of tightly wound characters throughout her career, and this one is especially heartbreaking. Her work is so compelling that it’s somewhat of a letdown when the film cuts back to the morose police and Graff’s peeved colleagues.
 
Though Graff served as chairman of a major company (the details of which are not divulged in the film), his available funds are estimated at only 20 million euros, a paltry sum that even surprises his wife. So when Graff’s captors demand 50 million for ransom, one of his subordinates at the company reasonably argues that “we can’t pay for Stan’s bad habits,” in light of his newly tarnished reputation. The media storm surrounding his wasteful lifestyle and multiple mistresses instantly undoes the public persona he had been upholding for so long. Though his wife has attempted to shield her eyes from his “bad habits,” Graff’s mother (“Belle de Jour”’s sublime Françoise Fabian) has a clarity of vision regarding her son that appears increasingly less heartless as the film progresses. She’s the one who ultimately chastises him for consistently doing what he wants regardless of the cost to others. One gets the idea that Graff isn’t worried about being kidnapped so much as he’s terrified about not being in control of his surroundings for the first time in his life. He’s the sort of guy who would rather hire a public relations firm than take the necessary steps toward improve his own image. Graff simply doesn’t have the emotional commitment to sustain a relationship of any real value. No wonder why his best friend is a dog.

Anne Consigny stars in Lucas Belvaux’s Rapt.
Photo credit: Kino Lorber, Inc.

With the wrong leading man, “Rapt” may have imploded purely on the basis of its loathsome main character. Sure, it might have functioned as a straightforward morality tale, but it would’ve felt distressingly one-note. What Attal brings to the role is a degree of humanity and dignity that may have not necessarily been on the page. He doesn’t excuse Graff’s crippling faults, but he does allow his primal fear and despair to burst through his coldly composed façade. He may love his wife and children, but that love somehow doesn’t satisfy the void lingering within that he attempts to fill elsewhere. Regardless of whether he’s freed from his physical entrapment, Graff is still a prisoner of his own temptations and is doomed to remaining on the outskirts of his own life. It’s during the film’s superb last act that this tragedy comes to fruition, and it’s the reason why Attal chose the role in the first place. Attal is an accomplished director in his own right (he helmed two of the best vignettes in 2009’s “New York, I Love You”), and he understands modulated nuances better than many other actor-turned-filmmakers. He is the real reason why “Rapt” works as well as it does all the way up until the bone-chilling final shot.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com matt@hollywoodchicago.com