hyped garbage

Good concept, poorly executed.

Admirable film.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Masterpiece-Woderful description of characters and background.Sabina Spielrein was,no doubt,a very special woman,and this film succeeds in doing justice with her sake,and especially with her extraordinary achievements in psychoanalysis therapy.The romantic affair she had with Dr.Jung is described powerfully by Faenza,and its ending is really heart-touching.Each main character gets a deep and full description-Dr.Jung,his methods of treatment and his complicated relationship with Sabina;Emma,that can't be judged of trying to save her family from being destroyed;and above all-Sabina herself,especially the development of her relationship with Dr.Jung,from being a patient into passion and true love.She gave her noble proof that her love was real,by letting him to choose his way,and still regarding him as a friend.The tragic destiny of Sabina is part of the Jewish tragedy during the 20th century,disappointed by the cruelty of the post-Lenin period in Russia,and later on-the Nazi holocaust.The history background is also very well told,without interrupting the plot itself.Everything here is told sensitively,and is very well acted.Emilia Fox gives here a wonderful performance,along the different situations of Sabina's complicated character and life.As Faenza made justice with Sabina's sake-we owe him.Faenza,you created a real masterpiece, and we salute you!

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.)

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...

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