Call them what you like - docudramas, faction, biopics - the vitality of films based on real-life events is usually constrained by historical facts. "A Dangerous Method" is just another straitjacketed drama relating how the collegial friendship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung foundered on various differences. Like much of Cronenberg's recent work, the film takes itself very seriously, but it's merely a psychoanalyst soap opera which reveals little of the two physicians' 'dangerous method'. The story begins with the arrival of a beautiful, disturbed young woman, Sabina, at Jung's clinic. Within moments the brilliant Jung has unravelled the girl's problem - guilt over masochistic sexual fantasies engendered by her father's corporal punishments during childhood. After some trite therapy sessions, Sabina is soon on the road to recovery - whereupon Jung encourages her to become an analyst. She promptly invalidates this recommendation by initiating an affair with the married Jung - and before too long he is administering severe spankings to his former patient as a prelude to their lovemaking.
"A Dangerous Method" tries to cover too much ground, and ends up skimming the surface. When Jung and Freud meet up, they engage in pedantic discussions about their ideas, whilst woodenly telegraphing the reasons for their later estrangement. The one provocative episode in the film is Jung's association with Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), whom he analyzes at his clinic. Gross turns the tables on his therapist - persuading Jung to act on his repressed desires for Sabina - before seducing a nurse and escaping over the clinic's wall to a life of poverty and disrepute. Cassel invests Gross with such dangerous charm that one yearns to join him in his flight from Cronenberg's shallow imagination.
"A Dangerous Method" tries to cover too much ground, and ends up skimming the surface. When Jung and Freud meet up, they engage in pedantic discussions about their ideas, whilst woodenly telegraphing the reasons for their later estrangement. The one provocative episode in the film is Jung's association with Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), whom he analyzes at his clinic. Gross turns the tables on his therapist - persuading Jung to act on his repressed desires for Sabina - before seducing a nurse and escaping over the clinic's wall to a life of poverty and disrepute. Cassel invests Gross with such dangerous charm that one yearns to join him in his flight from Cronenberg's shallow imagination.