This is DAVID CRONENBURG'S latest film and is all about the tensions between Freud and Jung as they sort of argue over what Psycho analysis is all about.
The film opens with a new patient, Sabina Speilrein, played by Keira Knightly, being admitted to Jung's clinic. She seems to be having some sort of hissy fit come spasms as she is carried into the manor house-come-hospital that his very rich wife has provided. Keira also speaks in an accent that sounds like it was copied from her cleaner's rather than the Russian noble woman she is meant to be. We watch as Jung, played by Michael Fassbender, treats her by talking to her. What he finds out is her problems are mainly caused by her fathers lack of parenting skills. This means that she is turned on by humiliation.
Jung goes off to meet Freud, played by Viggo Mortenson, and they have some interesting discussions on methods and what you call things, before another patient checks in with Jung, a highly sex obssessed Otto Gross, Played by Vincent Cassel.
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The film seems to show that most of the patients really are people who want to become phsychiatrists or psychoanalysis practioners and are subjecting themeseves as test cases. As you'd expect, the lives of the characters intertwine and doctor/ patient lines are crossed in some interesting scenes of Jung's affair with Speilrein that includes him spanking her in her bodice.
The film is beautifully shot and very well acted but I came away feeling like I had watched part 3 in an 8 part serial on the lives and works of Freud and Jung, it really felt like we came in halfway through the story and left well before the end. It also didn't make me believe that the people they were treating were ill: merely screwed up by the situations they found themselves in.
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