L'âme en jeu

This movie *could* have been much more than it was. We have two historical figures, psychiatrist Karl Gustav Jung, and a gifted patient, Sabina Spielrein, who first becomes Jung's lover, and then a child psychiatrist in her own right. I had been hoping for deep psychological insight, instead I got a cartoonish loony (Sabina) and a starchy doctor (K.G. Jung). The characters are over-simplified, and their complex relationship is dumbed down to Harlequin Romance level. Furthermore, Sabina's life in Russia and her accomplishments are barely even mentioned in the movie. The subplot with Marie and Frazer (the present-day researchers) is 100% unnecessary, too. So, in the end you are left with a pleasant, if sleepy, non-controversial movie, suitable for airing on national tv at prime time. Come to think of it, maybe this is what they had in mind all along...

Very confused and confusing movie... as if the director (served by a terrible screenplay) couldn't decide what to do with it... Reflections on the healing power of love (and on its destroying power as well?)? Passionality and personality against social rules? Historical glimpse on the late 800 and early 900's psychiatry and the birth of dynamic psychoterapies (on which nothing short that a vague attention to the unconscious and the enphasis on the human relationship - as an attempt to humanize said psychiatry - is said... )? Moreover the counterpoint story in contemporary times, short of clarifying those themes, seems only to add cliché to cliché...

I'd say Emilia Fox could have worked as Sabine Spielrein, BUT in another movie with another director... Not so bad Iain Glen as the esteemed young Carl Gustav Jung, even if the real one was a much more complex person, deserving to be treated with respect and care by able hands...

Thumbs down to Jane Alexander, who should return to host TV games on Italian TV where she started...

I happened to see the film yesterday and liked it a lot. Not a perfect movie, still, a must I would say. It plays a compelling picture of the life of this fascinating soul-healing lady, very much sunken into oblivion to date. I do hope this will shed more light on her professional activity. Still, one of the people commenting on the film made a mistake by stating Caroline Ducey plays the protagonist of this film, although she appears there in fact as the potential relative of Sabina Spielrein. Emilia Fox plays - not plays, not acts, actually BREATHES, LIVES - wonderfully the title role. Great shots, expressive music - all in all, it was a beautiful, emotional experience to me.

At the end of the film there is a text blurb mentioning that Spielrein's theoretical work influenced both Freud and Jung. Unfortunately, in the Scandinavian DVD edition this was mistranslated to the effect that Spielrein's work was *influenced by* both Freud and Jung. Apparently the idea that a woman could have influenced the work of these great men is still so far-fetched that the translator misread (in a most Freudian way) the text. Of course, having seen the film one could forgive the translator for not appreciating the impact of Spielrein's work, since it receives little, if any, attention in the script.

(BTW, There is also a (less Freudian) error in the sound editing, for about 15 minutes of the DVD edition the sound lags about one minute behind. Just so you know.)

Roberto Faenza has shot a very brave film, brave because shows an argument like this in the today's film panorama should be considered very brave. Nowadays, any film that enters into the psychoanalysis field and its world should be at least seen.

In this case, Faenza shot a non Italian film, with a multi national coproduction about a sort of small biography of Carl Jung the famous psychologist who has funded a personal current beside the one developed by Siegmund Freud. The film has some very good moments, specially when Jung is at his very beginning of his career in a house hospital in Zurich and meet Caroline Ducey as his very first patient. The developing of her illness and Jung's very modern approach compared to the rest of his colleagues in the hospital is really the best part of the film, this together with the start of their love "affair" worth the whole film. Unfortunately the rest of the film is not well driven, a sort of general and confused flashback brings the old scenes to a "today" situation through a "path" that a relative of Caroline is following in Russia with the help of some old books.

Rating: 6/10