ENTERTAINMENT
April 16, 2004 | Rob Kendt, Special to The Times
If we only had a couch to take "The Talking Cure." It's apropos not only because Christopher Hampton's play, now at the Mark Taper Forum, features founding figures of psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and their sometime protege Sabina Spielrein. A couch seat also suits Hampton's reverent, simplistic portrait of these pioneers, which comes off as the sort of studied, speechifying docudrama for which cable television was meant.
NEWS
January 5, 2012 | By Hugh Hart, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Shortly after Russian hysteric Sabina Spielrein is carried kicking and screaming into a Swiss sanitarium, her new doctor, Carl Jung, primly inquires, "What are your interests?" Sabina, portrayed in "A Dangerous Method" by Keira Knightley, snarls in reply: "Suicide and interplanetary travel. " Some icebreaker! Spastic and stammering, Sabina recovers after taking the "talking cure" administered by Jung (Michael Fassbender) under the guidance of his mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen)
ENTERTAINMENT
May 21, 2013 | By Mark Olsen
The debut feature for writer-director Alice Winocour, “Augustine” features a bracing and powerful performance by the young performer known as Soko. Now playing in Los Angeles, the film is set in 19th century France, its story based on the ethically and emotionally complicated relationship that develops between Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (played by Vincent Lindon) and the young woman (Soko) prone to fits of what was then called “hysteria” who would become his star patient. The scenes of Augustine having fits -- which were created in part by having Soko yanked about by unseen ropes and cables and in part by her yoga-induced flexibility -- are disconcerting to watch.
ENTERTAINMENT
April 26, 2004 | Dimitra Arlys, Dimitra Arlys is an actress living in Los Angeles.
It never ceases to amaze me how few critics know where to fault a production when it doesn't work. Case in point: Rob Kendt's review of "The Talking Cure," which he didn't like, found boring and held the script responsible ("Talk About Mind Games," April 16).
ENTERTAINMENT
November 23, 2011 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
Before it became known as psychoanalysis, the radical new method of dealing with emotional crises pioneered by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and others was known simply as "the talking cure. " And it is talk - smart, satisfying and sometimes even thrilling - that is at the heart of "A Dangerous Method. " "Method" stars Viggo Mortensen as Freud, Michael Fassbender as Jung, and a game but somewhat miscast Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, a woman who influenced them both. The confident directing style of David Cronenberg is essential in making this kind of intellectually stimulating cinema look easy, but the critical component in the film's success is Christopher Hampton's classically well-written script.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 18, 2012 | By Dennis Lim, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Few working filmmakers invite the application of the auteur theory — the notion that some films bear a directorial signature — as frequently as David Cronenberg. The coherence of his body of work is hard to miss. In movies as varied as "Videodrome," "Dead Ringers" and "Crash," he has found myriad ways to explore a recurring set of themes: the thrill and danger of transfiguration, the interrelation of the mind and the body. With these obsessions so firmly established, it is no wonder that many critics and fans watch a new Cronenberg film looking for signs of the old ones, sometimes detecting their encoded presence, sometimes bemoaning their absence.