‘The Rapture’ (R)

What if those strange people at the door with Bibles are right? "The Rapture" takes that thought and runs with it -- all the way to the brink. It eventually careens into a ludicrous chasm. Surprisingly, it carries you along for quite a while. There's something to be said for its Evel Knievel deliriousness.

Telephone operator Mimi Rogers is living on her own kind of edge. During the day her daily mantra is "What city, please? Please hold for the number." At night she's a hedonistic adventuress. She and erotic partner Patrick Bauchau search, vampirelike, for interesting, attractive couples for sexual, one-night encounters. Sensual thrill seeking is the prime pursuit.

Rogers's heart is not in it, however; it's an empty experience. When she overhears conversations about a religious sect, a pearl that people are having dreams about, as well as a boy-prophet who sees the future, her curiosity is powerful. When religious hawkers (coincidentally) knock on her door, she lets them in and starts asking questions. Suddenly, she wakes up in the middle of the night an utter believer.

Her transformation is as instant as it is total. When she lets Christ into her life, it's as if water is rushing into a vacuum. She changes her life in short order. Those sex parties are the first thing to go. She drops everyone from her former life, including bewildered Bauchau. She finds out more -- about that young seer, the pearl and the coming Armaggedon.

She tries to get rid of latest lover David Duchovny -- with whom she was sleeping when the transformation occurred. But he sticks romantically with her. In the kind of speedy exposition that occurs in biblical narrative, Duchovny also goes through a conversion. They marry and have a child.

Jews, atheists, Buddhists, Christians, maybe even fundamentalists, may laugh their way through this movie. There are many opportunities to do so. At one point, for instance, Rogers is taken to task for trying to convert information-assistance callers. "God made me an information operator for a reason," she tells her boss.

On the other hand, there's such serenity in Rogers's voice, the laugh quotient fades almost instantly. Writer/director Michael Tolkin tells us nothing about Rogers. We don't know how she got involved in hedonistic activities. But he presents her two lives -- before and after conversion -- so matter-of-factly, it's eerily believable. He's interested in seeing how far her unquestioning devotion will go. It goes to quite disturbing lengths. Believing she has been called to the desert, Rogers drops everything, takes her daughter there and waits for the end of the world.

What happens, of course, is for you to find out -- and have strong opinions on. Tolkin forces himself into an unsolvable narrative corner. He does not have the benefit of contacts with the transcendent beyond. Where does a movie go that's waiting for Armaggedon? What do you tell the Special Effects Department to do? At one point do you get Charlton Heston on the phone? Whatever your final assessment of "Rapture," it taps into questions that fascinate all of us. And as a dramatic piece about the boundaries of faith, it -- commendably -- goes all the way.