A Dangerous Method - Keira Knightley on the analyst's couch

If the idea of yet another costume film starring Keira Knightley doesn’t set your pulse racing then perhaps A Dangerous Method, David Cronenberg's absorbing historical drama about the early years of psychoanalysis will quicken your interest. Throwing herself - chin first - into the riskiest role of her career, Knightley plays the brilliant but hysterical young Russian Sabina Spielrein, who becomes first the patient and then the lover of ambitious young psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), while his mentor, Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), fumes on the sidelines.

Best known, of course, for horror, Cronenberg doesn’t go in for any exploding heads this time, but the surging emotions and heady ideas on display in his adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play The Talking Cure are equally combustible.

Released on DVD, Blu-ray & digital download on Monday 25th June by Lions Gate Home Entertainment.

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A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.