Kinky Keira's whipping yarn: Her role in A Dangerous Method as lover who is aroused by beatings

She made her name playing the archetypal English rose in a string of romcoms and costume dramas.
But now Keira Knightley is set to shock movie fans by playing a sexually masochistic neurotic in a controversial new thriller.
The 26-year-old Bend It Like Beckham and Pirates Of The Caribbean star appears topless in the film A Dangerous Method and in one scene is seen strapped to a bed while being thrashed by her lover.

Love and pain: Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender enact scenes of sadomasochism in A Dangerous Method

Knightley’s frank and often harrowing performance in the drama, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Friday, is already generating a considerable buzz for her and co-stars Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen.

 

More...

• SUZANNE MOORE: A dodgy face, a dodgier film, but I still love Madge, the woman who pleases herself
• Pretty in pink: Gwyneth Paltrow is a vision in rosa at the Venice Film Festival
• Woman in black: Gothic Madonna dons dark glasses to the Gucci Awards in Venice

One critic has described Knightley’s performance as ‘Oscar bait’ and the film is the bookies’ favourite to take the festival’s prestigious Golden Lion for best film.
A Dangerous Method tells the story of a scandalous affair between Sabina Spielrein, a beautiful but troubled Russian who -suffers from uncontrollable and violent fits, and Carl Jung, the married Swiss psychiatrist, who agrees to treat her.

Harrowing: Keira Knightley's performance will shock her fans

The film describes itself as a study of ‘sexuality, ambition and deceit’ and its title refers to Jung’s innovative ‘talking cure’, the ¬earliest form of psychoanalysis, in which Jung encourages Sabina to recall her feelings as a child when her father beat her.
In the opening scenes, a barely recognisable Knightley is shown being dragged kicking and screaming to the Austrian hos-pital where Jung – Michael Fassbender –works. She is shown suffering from uncontrollable fits that leave her struggling for speech.
But the pair quickly establish a relationship of trust, and Knightley’s character reveals that the fits are triggered by memories of childhood beatings administered by her father that left her sexually aroused.

Beat that: Keira Knightley's role has been described as Oscar bait

The beatings are identified as the cause of her sado-masochistic desires, and in one pivotal scene, Knightley is aroused when Jung innocently beats the dust off her coat with a stick.
When he asks his patient about her earliest memories of the beatings, she tells him: ‘It excited me.’
The highly educated Spielrein dreams of becoming a psycho¬analyst herself and Jung agrees to allow her to assist him in his cases. The pair develop an irresistible passion for each other as their work continues and they become lovers.

Proud: Keira Knightley at the film's premiere in Venice

In one seduction scene, Knightley’s character tells Jung: ‘If you ever want to take the initiative, I live in that building.’ And she then implores him: ‘I want you to punish me.’ The erotically charged film then charts the couple’s exploration of Knightley’s sadomasochistic fantasies.
The film is set in the years before the First World War when Jung was beginning to make a name for himself as a disciple of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Historically, Jung was a founding figure in the field of ¬psychoanalysis, while Spielrein was influential on both Jung’s and Freud’s careers. Historians have pointed to a likely romantic ¬relationship between Jung and Spielrein, and the film explores the possible erotic nature of such a relationship.
Ultimately destructive, the affair is used to highlight Freud’s revolutionary theories about sex and the subconscious. Freud, played by Viggo Mortensen, is a pivotal character in the film and his relationship with Jung is destroyed by events. In life, the two men endured a famous professional rift.
Based on Christopher Hampton’s 2003 play The Talking Cure, the film is regarded as one of the prestige projects of the year.
Hampton, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement, has written the screenplay and the film is directed by David Cronenberg, who also made The Fly and Dead Ringers.
The film, released next February, is already attracting online comment, with fans describing it as ‘awesome’ and ‘moving’.
Jeremy Thomas, the film’s producer, said: ‘I always knew Keira was a great actress but I didn’t know how great she could be.
‘The film is not salacious and the scenes are totally justifiable.’