The Rapture

Aching for meaning in her life, Sharon (Mimi Rogers), a sexually profligate telephone operator, discovers religious extremism. While waiting for salvation — for ''the rapture'' — she creeps to the edge of her own sanity. Written and directed by Michael Tolkin (screenwriter of The Player), this movie presents an unremittingly bleak vision of modern spiritual bankruptcy that's disturbing but also self-conscious, remote, and pretentious. (The cassette package strongly suggests, not very justifiably, that ''the rapture'' is sexual.) For all its doomsaying, The Rapture is more exercise than examination. It's not so much about the roots of fundamentalist belief or the character's pain and longing as it's about camera setups and storyboarding. As the fixated, born- again Sharon, Rogers works hard at being dreary, and she's almost too successful. With its holier-than-thou tone of cultivated angst, The Rapture preaches to the first-year film student. C-