Augustine (**3/4)

Perhaps a companion piece to A Dangerous Method, the 2011 drama about Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, this focuses on Jean-Martin Charcot (Vincent Lindon), the French neurologist who was a mentor to Freud. But that was later on; this movie depicts his earlier work with female “hysterics.” Actually, it almost exclusively focuses on his work with one female patient. Augustine (Soko), a 19-year-old maid, is taken to Charcot’s clinic at the start of the film and quickly becomes a kind of star patient, suffering as she does from dramatic seizures that can be reproduced under hypnosis, as well as minor paralyses. the doctor pokes her, prods her, and uses her as the main attraction in his lectures.

The movie, a first feature by its writer-director, Alice Winocour, and Lindon do a good job portraying Charcot as an exemplar of the imperious doctor as authority figure a century before anyone spoke of “patient-centered” care. It does a decent job portraying his patient, who develops a symbiotic relationship with her doctor in which he is savior, denier, father figure, and perhaps more. It does hardly any job at all placing Charcot into the patheon of medical pioneers, not even bothering with the usual typed epilogue typically found at the end of biographical movies. Although making it clear that some thought Charcot to be a quack, on the strength of the movie it’s hard to tell whether he’s a good scientist, and impossible to tell whether he helps his patients. Besides Augustine, the others are portrayed only briefly, mostly in interview segments meant to illuminate the variety of mysterious ailments that fell under the “hysteria” rubric. The only other significant character in the movie is Charcot’s wife (and perhaps his pet monkey).

This movie generally held my interest, but Charcot was too aloof a character (and Augustine not complex enough) to have pulled me in emotionally, and the lack of a broader historical perspective on this medical pioneer, or on the hysteria phenomenon of the 1800s, was frustrating.

IMDb link

viewed 6/27/13 7:15 pm at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 6/27/13