Freud's Last Session

Here, the only overdose that's been taken, it's an overdose of acting pills.

It’s not the fault of either star, but the half-baked script makes this an unsatisfyingly thin exploration of the weighty themes it seeks to cover.

Hopkins and Goode give two understated yet im- pressively precise performances.

Instead, though, we get an engineered dead heat, less alive to the power of its ideas than their awards-baity provenance. For a few, that may be enough – but with apologies to Freud himself, sometimes a dud is just a dud.

Not a terribly profound movie, perhaps, but robustly performed and an interesting reminder of the dusty old debates on the point of being swept away by the great horror of the second world war.

Hopkins is always fascinating, always makes it seem as though what he is saying has only just occurred to him, rather than being long dictated. That’s quite an achievement in this talky, stagey film.

A meeting between Freud and CS Lewis should crackle with energy - but in Matthew Brown's film it merely fizzles.

Smooth and enjoyable as a gorgeous piece of chamber music.

Freud’s stubbornness at times feels clichéd, and the script’s meandering structure doesn’t benefit either of the two leads.

What could have been an exquisite talk about existentialism ends up being a graphic description of these historical figures' past, focusing more on their life experiences than on the legacies left for posterity. [Full review in Spanish]