September 1999 Cover
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By
Giacomo Tramontagna
Rapture: The Pavel Dubcek Legend
Rating: 2 Stars
All Worlds Video. Produced by Pavel Nikos. Directed by Wim Hof. Written by Wim Hof and William Higgins. Videography by Pavel Nikos. Edited by Stephen Bennett. Starring Pavel Dubcek, Pepa, Tabor Schindler, Martin Pravda, Pavel Korsakov, Jirka Kalvoda, Andel, Jarda Waldek, El Greco, Mylan Forman, Zdenek Romany, and Jan Dvorak.
How to order
Like Wim Hof's overrated Impromptus,
Rapture is slow, pretentious, visually beautiful, and a bit silly. Running in excess of two and a half hours, this latest
two-cassette offering from Hof (the European persona of expatriate American director William Higgins) and Czech videographer Pavel Nikos has their trademark
light-classical soundtrack, sumptuously pretty footage of Prague and the Czech countryside, and a cast of photogenic Eastern European hunks from the Hof/Nikos repertory
company. From the opening credit sequence, in which Pavel Dubcek and Pepa trudge down country lanes to the strains of "Viens, Mallika" from
Lakmé, you know you're in the presence of something highfalutin.
The box cover art suppresses the on screen subtitle "The Pavel Dubcek Legend," stresses El Greco (the slightly sullen blond who headed the cast of
Impromptus), and relegates Dubcek to the background. But Rapture pays tribute to Pavel Dubcek, one of Higgins's strongest European performers, sexual and otherwise.
Essentially straight, Dubcek not only handles gay sex more convincingly than most of his predominantly straight or bisexual colleagues, he brings to this and other
Hof/Nikos productions a sorely needed touch of eccentric humanity. His long hair, wry Slavic face, and crooked smile suggest that his delectable body is inhabited by a real,
live person.
Beginning with Communion imagery and ending with the actual sacrament,
Rapture wants to suggest that gay sex is holy, a union of souls as well as
bodies. Unfortunately, in five overlong sex scenes, we get mostly bodies going soullessly about their business. The one erotic episode that really comes to life involves
Andel and two other young soldiers frolicking in the woods. El Greco and Dubcek are dressed and posed to look like Bjorn Andresen and Dirk Bogarde in the
Luchino Visconti version of Death in Venice, the mother of all exercises in music, torpor, visual splendor, and queer angst.
Rapture tries to turn the downbeat ending of
Death in Venice on its head, but when Dubcek and El Greco have sex, the fireworks seem damp.
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