Last Friday, the Department of Art and Art History and the Department of French and Italian brought director Lucas Belvaux and his latest French film, “Rapt,” to Stanford.

“Rapt” is a dark film about Stanislas, a high-profile French industrialist who is kidnapped and held for a ransom too high for his family to pay. As he suffers through weeks as a hostage, his associates and family live through the maligning press investigation of his lifestyle. “Rapt” crosses from horror to psychological thriller, and ultimately transforms into a melancholic and realistic tale of family life.

This mélange of genres, a risk Belvaux takes with the confidence of an experienced filmmaker secure in his vision, marks “Rapt” with a unique artistic touch, lending it a depth not found in many “scary movies” today. As we watch Stanislas, played by the talented and sullen Yvan Attal, deteriorate under the oppressive and cruel treatment of his captors, his once-fit body turns skeletal, his distinguished features give way to sallow skin, sunken eyes and emaciated cheeks. The degeneration of his body parallels the disintegration of his public image, as his gambling habits and mistresses – revealed to the audience in the opening scene, but unknown to his family – are broadcast across France.

Paris itself lends a downcast tone to the film’s aesthetics. The shots of the city are grey, almost monochromatic, the sophisticated, dour city casting an austere hue on the visuals of Belvaux’s work. The film is also patently European in that it makes no indulgences, as an American film might. “Rapt” does not pander to its audience, offering no comedic relief and no breaks in tension – it pursues with a cool and steady hand the dark impression it intends to leave. “Rapt” is not without its flaws, playing up the terror and torture of a severed finger with somewhat annoying persistence, but these flaws are overshadowed by the film’s successes. Delving deep into the psychology of Stanislas’s female intimates, from his wife, played by Anne Consigny (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), to his mother, played by Francoise Fabian, “Rapt” offers particularly striking insight into the weight carried by the French matriarch.

The finest moments of the two-hour film come at the end, as Belvaux moves away from the narrative of Stanislas’s capture and lends his full attention to life after unanticipated tragedy. “Rapt” represents a manifestly European evolution of the typical thriller or horror film into something with far more depth and, consequently, weight. Leaving the film, which ends on a somehow content cliffhanger, it feels as though you are leaving a contemplative and interesting art exhibit, rather than a cheap, mass-produced flick which flies out of your mind as quickly as it entered.

Belvaux achieves something worth noting in “Rapt” and offers a worthwhile artistic experience for those interested in French culture, those intrigued by European film or those simply looking for a dark movie with something more to offer.