Arrebato (1980)

title: Arrebato
directed by: Ivan Zulueta
written by: Iván Zulueta
photography by: Ángel Luis Fernández
music by: Negativo
edited by: José Luis Peláez, José Pérez Luna, María Elena Sáinz de Rozas
cast: Eusebio Poncela, Cecilia Roth, Will More
imdb

Recently I have finished reading Marisha Pessl's novel Night Film, which features one cult director named Stanislas Cordova (who, by the way, has italian and catalan origins), and his tortured works. It reminded me of the great episode absolute Master John Carpenter directed for Masters Of Horror, Cigarrette Burns, and the film the main character is hired to find, La Fin Absolue du Monde, from cult director Hans Backovic. If I had to think about one real director who resembles to these both fictional characters that would be Ivan Zulueta. This spanish director has only one long lenght work, Arrebato, which is, without any doubt, the definitive spanish cult movie, but also, one of the top five (if not three) ever cult movies. It is impossible to label Arrebato: althought the closest genre would be horror, it would be a big mistake to approach Arrebato as a horror movie. This, as the truest cult movies is a unique work.

Unique not only because it can not be labeled, but also because it is the only movie ever directed by Ivan Zulueta (alone, because he co-directed Un, dos, tres, al escondite inglés, who had shot several short films before Arrebato, but only two episodes for different Spanish State Television series.

Shot in 1980, probably the golden age of spanish cinema (from the popular success point of view exclusively, the average quality of the movies was simply horrendous), Arrebato was received with indifference.

The plot is really simple: the fascination of the character played by Eusebio Poncelo for the young Pedro, and the interaction between them two and Ana Turner, played by Cecilia Roth (sister of rock guitar player Ariel Roth). And also a movie about the power and fascination of images.

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Far from being a master piece (in the usual sense) this is a gorgeous, unique, mesmerizing movie, the movie by which all cult movies should be qualified.