You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In this highly enjoyable collection of essays on film, Andrea Sabbadini has brought together a diverse group of analysts and film scholars from Europe, the US, and Israel. Many of the essays come from the third European Psychoanalytic Film
Festival, an event that Sabbadini chairs. The films discussed are linked by themes of loss, but the essays move in many other interesting directions as well, to touch on issues of perversion, narcissism, and trauma, all in the context of film theory. Many of the writers point out the fruitfulness of the exchange between psychoanalysis and film criticism, and we may ask why psychoanalysis has enjoyed less success in its applications to other art forms? Sabbadini provides a useful frame for such considerations in his Introduction where he points out the special place the concept of time holds for both film and psychoanalysis, and ways in which this is conveyed through issues of loss. If psychoanalysis is a medium for the unfolding of a relationship over time as the past is re-experienced and losses mourned, then film is a medium where an encapsulated experience can be had, lost, and revisited again and again.
The films discussed range from the well-known and widely distributed, such as Almódovar's Talk to Her, to the little known, such as Mother Dao, the Turtle-like. Most readers will be unfamiliar with some of them, but all the films seem so utterly fascinating that one cannot help but look forward to the opportunity to view them. It is not essential that the films be seen in advance since each essay stands well on its own. One of the unintentional benefits of this book is as an introduction to the work of some of the more exciting, lesser known (at least to an American audience) filmmakers from Europe. The collection contains 15 essays that discuss over 20 films. I will focus on just a few, but the quality of writing is high throughout as is the sophistication in both film and psychoanalytic theory. My only quibbles are that, ave