I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Admirable film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Blistering performances.

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!

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

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...