A Dangerous Method, review - Telegraph There was a time when a David Cronenberg picture called A Dangerous Method would have been reason to brace ourselves, expecting a radical experiment on the body (The Brood) or something gone hideously wrong (The Fly). It wouldn't be fair to pin him down to just one genre, though; over time, Cronenberg has simply broadened the scope of what he does. When we first see Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) spanking his subject, Sabine Spielrein (Keira Knightley), across a bed, it's a crisp explosion of pent-up sexual tension, a leap into role-play, and a blatant breach of professional ethics all at once. Jung is already married - his wife Emma's expecting her second child - but both Sabine and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) correctly identify him as a closet libertine. His warm relationship with Freud is irretrievably jeopardised when Sabine breaks her silence, and the working rapport between the two men becomes ever pricklier. Intellectually astute though they are, Hampton's dialectical dogfights might have seemed overly dry on film without Cronenberg's impeccable design and quick-witted direction of his stars. Knightley's performance as an emotionally crippled hysteric starts at full tilt, writhing and baying, her jaw spasming outward in technically accurate imitation of documented cases from the era. Whether you find this histrionic display impressive or instantly off-putting may be a matter of taste, but you certainly couldn't accuse her of being in any way cowed by the material. Mortensen, in very much a supporting role, thrives superbly for his third Cronenberg running, summoning a peppery gravitas, and an eye-narrowing fearfulness, as the father of psychiatry might well, about patricidal impulses from his younger colleague. As for Fassbender, his job may be the least flashy or scene-stealing, but Jung is palpably a different man by the end, and that's all his doing. What's odd, for Cronenberg, is how the film can feel like an advert for buttoned-down restraint rather than danger or release. Spotlessly organised, it's an exercise the director knows he can pull off without breaking a sweat. Are we allowed to prefer him sweaty?