Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

The Secret Rapture (1993)

Director: Howard Davies

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Whiffle, whiffle, whiffle. There's a dead old man in the bed and Stevenson is balled on the floor, weeping, moisture pouring from every facial orifice. Enter Wilton, surreptitiously. Giving her father's corpse a scant glance, not even noticing her grieving sister, she rummages through the jewellery on the dressing table and purloins a ring. Caught out, she's shamed, then furious. It's a response Stevenson's Isobel Coleridge seems to provoke, an illustration of writer David Hare's central question: why do good people make everyone around them behave badly? Everyone wants to dump or defuse the alcoholic widow (Whalley-Kilmer). Long-suffering Isobel takes her on, only to discover too late she sucks up everything in her path. The film is something of an '80s morality play, with characters behaving like Lust, Greed and Ambition instead of real people, but thanks to first-time director Davies' luminous moods, accelerating menace and chiaroscuro images, it packs a considerable emotional punch - while holding the mirror implacably up to the audience.

Author: SFe 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Howard Davies

Producer: Simon Relph

Cast: Juliet Stevenson, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Penelope Wilton, Neil Pearson, Alan Howard, Robert Stephens, Milton McRae full cast

Duration: 95 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.