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First Hit:  There was something not real, or lacking engagement about or between these characters that left me uninterested.

There was a bit of noise about this film in the press. The idea of two women, friends for life, having two sons with whom they each have intimate physical relations is thought provoking. How did these mothers allow intimacy with their best friend's son?

That's what the film attempts to address. For me I was anticipating the moment when the intimate line was crossed and by whom. However, this is exactly what didn’t work for me. I didn’t see the pre-moment buildup that would have been needed for any of the characters to move into this sort of intimacy.

The film did a good job of showing the connection between the two mothers Lil (Naomi Watts) and Roz (Robin Wright) as they grew up together from young kids into adulthood. Their respective sons Ian (Xavier Samuel) and Tom (James Frecheville) are also best friends and grew up together as well.

The idyllic beach life on the coast to Australia adds to the surreal adventure this film attempts to take the audience on, actually subtracts from the intensity of the situation when Ian decides to reach out to Roz for affection.

Watts is beautiful and effective as a mother, but as Tom’s lover it didn’t quite work. I didn’t see the spark and alluring fire. Wright was gorgeous and seemed distanced from her husband as well as her son although there was an emotional flicker as Ian approached her for affection. Samuel was the person who most pushed this film and subject the most. His aching over his father’s loss and movement to be loved emotionally and physically by Wright was the films strongest character. Frecheville seemed to have more of a laissez faire attitude towards his intimacy to his best friends wife, but interestingly enough, he was the one to cement them all in the end. Christopher Hampton wrote the screen play that came from Doris Lessing’s novel. I don’t think there were enough story creating scenes to develop what could have been a strong film of what some would call taboo behavior. Anne Fontaine did well with what she had.

Overall: An interesting attempt to broach a controversial subject but it ended up being very vanilla.

A Dangerous Method

First Hit:  I liked the concept but this was a very uneven film.

Sabrina Spielrein (played by Keira Knightley) was a disturbed patient of Carl Jung (played by Michael Fassbender) and ended up being a psychologist and lover of Jung.

She was one of the first to be treated by Jung using the talking method (psychoanalysis). Unfortunately, Knightley’s rendition of Spielrein seemed totally out of place, overly acted, and poorly executed. From the jutting chin, distorted hand positions and the occasional half hearted attempt at a Russian accent, her part was mostly unwatchable.

For this I fault both director David Cronenberg and Knightley. The interaction between Freud (played by Viggo Mortensen) and Jung was somewhat better and as one who studied a lot of psychology and did work in this field I would have like a deeper engagement of each of their theories and the differences between them.

However this film floated along like a rudderless boat. In the end I didn’t care about any of the characters nor did I think I learned much.

Knightley was mostly horrible. This is the worst role I’ve ever seen her in and wonder why she was directed this way. Fassbender was very controlled and reserved as I suppose the character was required to be, yet it took away from the depth of who he was playing. Mortensen was better at Freud than the others were in their characters. There was an arrogant solidness of his thought process that was palatable and interesting. However I would have like to have known more. Christopher Hampton and John Kerr wrote a lifeless script. Cronenberg did not do his best work here and it showed.

Overall: For such a rich subject, to have this fall this flat was really very sad.