Es uno de los nombres que más suenan en la actualidad cinematográfica. Cuatro años después de "Promesas del este", y mientras nos llegan rumores y más rumores sobre su posible secuela,  David Cronenberg tiene antes dos proyectos en liza.  Uno ya esta en marcha, es el que nos ocupa. El otro, es la adaptación del libro de Don DeLillo  "Cosmópolis," film en el que seguramente contará con Colin Farrell como protagonista. No es este el caso de "A Dangerous Method", proyecto sobre el cual venimos hace ya tiempo informando y en el que Cronenberg vuelve a reunirse con Viggo Mortensen para llevar a cabo la adaptación de la controvertida obra teatral de Christopher Hampton, responsable de los libretos de "Las amistades peligrosas" y "Cheri" que en esta ocasión centra la historia en la relación entre Sigmund Freud y Carl Jung papeles que interpretarán Michael Fassbender (descubierto en "Hunger", consagrado en "Fish Tank", conocido por "Malditos Bastardos") y el propio Viggo Mortensen que llega al rodaje para reemplazar en el papel a Christoph Waltz, el actor inicialmente destinado a interpretar al famoso psicólogo.

"A Dangerous Method" también cuenta en su reparto con Kiera Knightley y Vincent Cassell. El rodaje comenzó el pasado mes de mayo en Alemania lo que significa que su estreno mundial muy probablemente se produzca en mayo de 2011, es decir, en el Festival de Cannes del próximo año. De momento ya tenemos primeras imágenes de un film que seguro, dará que hablar. Nosotros desde luego, lo esperamos con los brazos abiertos.

Quienes estén interesados en saber algo más de la obra de Hampton aquí tienen una crítica gentileza de la web Complete Review.

"The Talking Cure is a play about Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and the earliest days of psychoanalysis. Beside Jung?s wife the only other significant figures in the play are also psychoanalysts, two damaged human beings who are both followers and patients of Jung and Freud. One is Sabina Spielrein; in Hampton?s play she and Jung became romantically involved (as they apparently really did). The play describes Spielrein?s transformation from violent and deeply disturbed woman in her late teens to a reasonably well-adjusted medical student and then practitioner -- as well as offering one glimpse decades ahead, to show what becomes of her. Jung cures her, more or less, and he does so using the ?talking cure? -- the now familiar technique of allowing a patient to do most of the talking while the doctor at best lightly guides the patient along. At the time it was a completely innovative technique -- a "radical therapeutic idea", Jung calls it (and describes it first as "psychanalysis", until master Freud decides it should be: "Psychoanalysis", because: "it?s more logical and it sounds better.")

The play covers the time from 1904 to 1913 (with one brief scene at the end of the first act looking ahead to 1942). These were defining years for the new field of psychology, and in the play Hampton traces the relationship between Jung and Freud: Jung is first seen as Freud's follower and then even heir (as drug-addicted Otto Gross, the other patient-cum-psychoanalyst, proves too unstable to follow in Freud's footsteps), but eventually there is a break between the two -- one that Spielrein (and Hampton) suggest weakens the field as a whole.

Jung's wife is focussed entirely on her children (on the ones she has, and on getting more), and Jung eventually can't help but feel passionately about his fascinating patient. Spielrein?s is an interesting case. Abused -- verbally and physically -- as a child by her domineering but otherwise disinterested parents, she also finds sexual arousal in being humiliated and hurt. Jung eventually helps her come to terms with these issues, but she never entirely escapes them. Eventually, Jung and Spielrein become romantically involved, causing some professional difficulties for Jung -- and helping to harden the break with Freud.
The play effectively shows the difficulties of keeping the human element from influencing psychoanalytic practise, as all four psychoanalysts (Jung, Spielrein, Gross, and even, to some extent, Freud) allow their personalities (and especially their defects) to affect their work.

These are interesting characters: Jung, torn between his bourgeois, family-oriented lifestyle and his passion for Spielrein, as well as the damaged Spielrein and Gross, taking different approaches to dealing with their personal demons. But this is an awful lot of material to cram into a play, and, in particular, the Jung-Freud conflict isn?t presented as effectively as one might wish.

Particularly odd is the final scene of the first act, a flash ahead to 1942, when just in the scene before Spielrein said: "I don?t like to think about the future." Her 1942 fate is tragic, but not a convincing explanation for her too-prescient fear more than three decades before; it feels as if this was the only way Hampton could slip in what became of her.

These are fascinating stories, but the play doesn?t entirely successfully use them. There?s decent drama on the stage, but there seem too many quick fixes, with too little sense of what really goes into all these changes and transformations. It?s entertaining enough, but one feels that the material deserves more attention.