On general release from Fri 10 Feb

David Cronenberg / UK/Germany/Canada/Switzerland / 2011 / 99 mins

We’ve come to recognise David Cronenberg as an authority figure in dark cinema and psychological horror – yet undercutting much of that is his fascination with identity through violence. While this latest venture keeps up that quota, it’s a tame and indulgent journey into sexual activity, clutching at themes most vividly explored in Crash (1996). Here, Cronenberg explores the professional relationship between Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud (Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen) and later Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who would come to Jung as a patient before leaving as his lover and afterwards a psychoanalyst herself.

The majority of Cronenberg’s action includes painful armchair reflection and bullshit superego dream interpretation. If we are to believe most of Freud’s psychoanalysis in the film, everything would become phallic and identity could only be explored through sex – perhaps he’s right as Knightley seems to demonstrate excitement purely from being whipped and beaten, but it somewhat turns the film into a one-dimensional fantasy which neatly stays within the lines. The facts about Jung and Freud’s relationship are at times illuminating (Jung became interested in telepathy and parapsychology much to Freud’s disapproval); so Cronenberg teases out the nuances of their working lives from John Kerr’s original 1993 book quite efficiently but it just feels a bit ham-fisted when engaging in the overall intellectual discourse it’s constantly driving at.