My Best Films

You win an Oscar and everybody wants a piece of you.

Sadly, even though we’d love to wield casting power in Hollywood and draft Christoph Waltz into every single film made from this point forward (like that Seinfeld gag in 30 Rock), the actor’s only got so much time and energy to play with.

Which is why he’s had to drop out of tinkering about on-screen as Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg’s cool-looking (but boring-titled) The Talking Cure.

The flick’s set to start filming from May for a pretty extensive 10 weeks. But with Waltz signing up to play another head case in Water For Elephants, he’s had to leave Freud in the gutter.

Bad for us, great for Viggo Mortensen, who’s been called in by Cronenberg to replace him. So it’s now Mortensen as Freud, Michael Fassbender as Jung and Keira Knightley as Sabina, the disturbed woman who goes to see Jung for help.

Expect some steamy scenes between the latter, as the producers have pledged “lots of spirited sex”. And if the Mortensen-Cronenberg team-up record is anything to go by (Eastern Promises, A History Of Violence), The Talking Cure will be a punchy, impactful jaunt.

Okay, probably not so much a jaunt as a haunting, depressing examination of humanity. But hey ho!

Can Mortensen fill the thesping void left by Waltz?
 

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