After a couple projects have been touted as the next from David Cronenberg, it looks like The Talking Cure is it with a cast lined up. Hopscotch Films reveals on its Facebook page that it has picked The Talking Cure up for distribution in Australia and reveals that Keira Knightley, Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender are leading the cast.
The Talking Cure is a play by Christopher Hampton. Here’s the premise:
Overshadowed by portents of the coming wars, Zurich and Vienna are the setting for this tale of emotional vicissitude and intellectual debate. The Talking Cure is an intimate picture of the birth of psychoanalysis and of two intense and inextricably interwoven relationships. Carl Jung uses Sigmund Freud’s “talking cure” on Sabina, a young Russian hysteric with whom he will fall in love. Impressed with Jung’s results, Freud anoints him his successor, but when Jung develops his own theories they part ways. Sensitive and intelligent, The Talking Cure illuminates the origins of one of the twentieth century’s most influential schools of thought.
It’s not clear who, between Waltz and Fassbender, is playing Freud and Jung. There’s also no indication as to when this might go into production. I’m kind of expecting this to make for a good companion to Dead Ringers in a double feature what with the medical background and two close male characters who find themselves at odds and a woman in the middle. However, this one probably won’t involve gynecological instruments made for mutant women…
Cronenberg also has an adaptation of Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis and a remake of his own film, The Fly, which remains an incredibly odd development. There’s also a slim possibility that The Matarese Circle could be revived down the line if Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington are available at the same time.
Between all of those possible projects, I think I’m excited that it’s The Talking Cure that seems to be moving ahead. Still, I’m unlikely to complain as long as my favorite director is making something, or anything at all.
