A trou­bled film­mak­er goes through hell in Iván Zulueta’s Arrebato

Arreba­to begins with a shot of a cel­lu­loid strip being cut – a promise of a fea­ture where the very medi­um of film will play a promi­nent rôle. Sure enough, this is a film about two film­mak­ers, about the films that they make togeth­er and apart, and ulti­mate­ly about the con­sump­tive pow­er of film­ing and viewing.

José Sir­ga­do (Euse­bio Pon­cela) is a dis­con­tent­ed hor­ror direc­tor based in Madrid, whose lat­est cheapo flick has been cut, at his own insis­tence, to end with the vam­piress not shown burn­ing alive (as José’s edi­tor would like), but instead look­ing straight to cam­era in defi­ant exul­ta­tion. ​“She stares at the audi­ence and they’ll get it that she’s delight­ed to be a vam­pire. She loves it, no regrets. And there the sto­ry ends. Full stop,” José insists, adding: ​“The impor­tant thing is know­ing what she does and doesn’t want. Noth­ing else mat­ters. Redundant.”

José returns to his apart­ment to find two blasts from a hap­pi­er past: his junkie for­mer star and ex-girl­friend Ana Turn­er (Cecil­ia Roth) passed out in his bed; and a mail pack­age con­tain­ing a door key, a cas­sette tape and a recon­struct­ed Super‑8 film reel from his old friend Pedro (Will More). As José lis­tens to Pedro’s record­ed mes­sage, he is tak­en on a trip down mem­o­ry lane, as flash­backs show their first encounter, 12 months ear­li­er in the coun­try­side near Segovia at the house where Pedro lived with his cousin Mar­ta, (Mar­ta Fer­nán­dez Muro) and their aunt Car­men (Car­men Girlat), and where José was con­tem­plat­ing a pos­si­ble loca­tion shoot.

Pedro is, putting it mild­ly, weird: con­stant­ly sport­ing a heavy over­coat in the sum­mer heat and play­ing with toy slime, he is a 27-year-old adult try­ing, Peter Pan-like, to remain a 12-year-old boy, and an ama­teur exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er strug­gling to shoot sus­pend­ed moments of enrap­tured paus­es (Arreba­to means ​‘rap­ture’) for his own pri­vate amuse­ment. José is fas­ci­nat­ed and seduced by this strange man­child, and soon returns with Ana (whom he has just intro­duced to hero­in) for a bizarre week­end of sex, drugs and home videos.

That was a year ago, and José has long since for­got­ten about Pedro and ditched Ana – but now Ana is back, and this audio tape, along with Pedro’s lat­est, pos­si­bly last film, lures José to learn of his friend’s fate, and per­haps to aban­don him­self to the same self-destruc­tive path.

There are three sides to this bizarre love tri­an­gle: eros, hero­in and film. The drug facil­i­tates the dis­tract­ed states that Pedro longs to cap­ture; the sex, though imped­ed by the drug, cements the trio’s union; and Pedro’s movies are an unre­li­able record of the result­ing ecsta­sy, where per­haps what is most impor­tant dis­ap­pears between the frames, or is edit­ed out. As José uses the key to enter Pedro’s city apart­ment and to retrace his final moments, he will, like Pedro, be devoured by cin­e­ma itself, and lost in the cut.

Mar­ta describes Pedro’s home movies as ​‘hal­lu­cin­e­ma’ – a port­man­teau word which might serve equal­ly to describe Arreba­to itself. For it attempts, like Pedro’s reels, to cap­ture on film the hedo­nism that was emerg­ing in the wake of Fran­cis­co Franco’s 1975 death, as its plea­sure-seek­ing char­ac­ters pur­sue addic­tions, both phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and bisex­u­al, that would have been cen­sored under the fas­cist dic­ta­tor. Yet it is also, like the vam­pire film on which José has half-heart­ed­ly been work­ing, a hor­ror root­ed in what is absent, elid­ed and unseen.

Mean­while, lis­ten close­ly and you might recog­nise that Glo­ria (Hele­na Fer­nán-Gómez), one of Pedro’s new friends in Madrid, is voiced by none oth­er than Pedro Almod­ó­var, who would soon, as a film­mak­er in his own right, have the rest of the world enrap­tured by the cin­e­ma of a new­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic Spain. Here, though, iron­i­cal­ly enough, the char­ac­ter that Almod­ó­var plays togeth­er with Fer­nán-Gómez is respon­si­ble not so much for mak­ing a film as for ruin­ing one, as she turns away a cam­era that is sup­posed to be shoot­ing Pedro as he sleeps.

This odd­i­ty from writer/​director Iván Zulue­ta is hard to pin down. Its drama­tis per­son­ae, com­ing from Spain’s recent­ly lib­er­at­ed bohemi­an demi­monde, are alien­at­ing and unlike­able, and their rela­tion­ships impen­e­tra­ble. Its hor­ror exists pure­ly (and lit­er­al­ly) in cam­era, and ends in the blank empti­ness to which José and Pedro have been trav­el­ling all along.

And yet there is noth­ing else quite like it – a film where cin­e­ma itself is the ulti­mate vam­pire, and its sub­ject the prey, addict­ed to the rap­ture of being caught and drained. Here, much as José says of his own film, the vic­tims’ more or less will­ing desire is all that counts, and the details of their ruin irrelevant.

Arreba­to is released on Blu-ray by Radi­ance, 17^th April, 2023