“If what I think is going to happen does happen, no one will send you the last film. You’ll have to come and get it,” declares Pedro (Will More) in the opening scene of Arrebato. Made during Spain’s transition to democracy after the death of Franco, Iván Zulueta’s 1979 film is a dark child of the La Movida Madrilena countercultural movement: a claustrophobic film about addiction, of both the narcotic and cinematic variety. Pedro’s provocation is the catalyst for the other members of the film’s central trio—filmmaker José (Eusebio Poncela) and his actor ex-girlfriend Ana (Cecilia Roth)—to join his quest for the rapture referred to in Zulueta’s title.
His early belief in the power of cinema dispelled by his experiences in the commercial Spanish film industry, José returns from home on a Friday evening after a day of shooting a cheap horror film to discover Ana passed out on his bed and a package containing a tape recording of Pedro’s taunt and a reel of Super 8 film. Where once film was José’s main inspiration, the rampant drug use that typified the era has led to a chemical dependency for both him and Ana, reducing the scope of their world to the self-contained universe of his apartment. Alternately combative and tender, their relationship only persists based on lost promises of the past; they spend most
