I realize that any expression meant to convey my complete lack of enthusiasm for the first poster for David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, could be met with derision by the interweb movers and shakers and arbiters of all things hip, but…meh.

I mean really. I understand that there may have been a rush to get this out for the Venice International Film Festival, since it is in Italian and it has the VFF logo in the upper right hand corner (my right, poster’s left), but this film has been in the can for a year! Are we honestly expected to believe that no one associated with marketing the film, in particular Sony Classics (although to be fair they’ve only had it for a couple of months), could have, at any time, come up with something better?

This is merely the heads of its three principal players, Viggo Mortensen, Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender. And Knightley is not only front and center with the other two peering over her shoulders as if they were in a bad rom-com, but bigger! What the hell? She even gets first billing in the trailer. She may be playing the character who comes between the two pioneers of modern psychiatry, but I don’t think Knightley is the selling point here. I’m not going to see it so that I can see Miss Keira’s bony ass being disciplined, I’ll be going to see it because it’s Michael Fassbender doling out the discipline. And I won’t be alone. I’ll wager the audience for this movie is going to 75% female. (Oh and why is no one talking about Vincent Cassel in this multi-layered Viennese torte of a movie?)

 A Dangerous Method revolves around the relationship between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sabina Spielrein (Knightley), a Russian Jew who is first his patient and then his lover. While she does come between Jung and Sigmund Freud, his mentor (Mortensen), the relationship also serves as the basis for much of his writings and research into what eventually becomes known as Jungian psychoanalysis. All of which may sound dry as hell until you see the trailer. Holy Schnikey! “Sometimes you have to do something unforgivable, just to go on living.” *swoon*

A Dangerous Method follows an in-competition screening in Venice with another one in Toronto before opening in the US in January and the UK in February 2012.