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Unconscious
(3 stars)
Leonor Watling, Luis Tosar, Nuria Prims
Directed by Joaquin Oristrell
Rated R
Opens Friday
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The Spanish film Unconscious is a farce so frothy, so airy, that it's sometimes easy to overlook the fact that it tackles some very heavy subjects. Set in Spain in 1913, at the dawn of psychoanalysis, Unconscious has the specter of Sigmund Freud hanging over it, as the groundbreaking psychiatrist is set to make a visit to address his local disciples, and his radical theories are causing all sorts of upheaval among the Spanish mental-health community. One doctor who's most definitely not on board with Freud's sex-obsessed ideas is the buttoned-down Salvador (Tosar), but the other way that Freud infuses the film is a bit more metaphorical, as Salvador is about to learn to unleash his inner desires in a very forward-thinking way.
That's thanks to his sister-in-law, Alma (Watling), whose husband, also a psychiatrist, has gone missing. Alma and Salvador's search for the missing Leon takes them deep into their own dark desires and buried secrets, as well as those of Salvador's wife, Olivia (Prims), Alma and Olivia's father and even the King of Spain himself. Director and co-writer Oristrell stages funny, madcap scenes around bondage, cross-dressing and incest, somehow managing to wring humor along with some genuine emotion from each.
Watling, a Pedro Almodovar favorite who's always a joy to watch, is beyond charming here, and many of the screwball set-pieces are funny in a skewed way. Oristrell sort of overloads on the whimsy, though, with cutesy transitional devices that look like silent-film inter-titles or frames of film getting caught in the projector. Alma relentlessly drops names of influential literary and political figures, proving she's smarter than the average woman of her time, but also demonstrating that Oristrell doesn't exactly engage deeply with all of the issues he's touching on.
He evokes the period primarily through elaborate outfits and even more elaborate facial hair, and leaves you without a whole lot to think about. As Freud might say, though, sometimes a movie is just a movie. –Josh Bell
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