In the opening scenes of "A Dangerous Method," we find Keira Knightley playing a young woman who is completely, utterly losing it. This is not just a "scream and smash some dishes" movie version of a breakdown, but total gibbering, thrashing, convulsing hysteria. It's frighteningly out of control, and Knightley -so often derided in the press as just another pretty face — is so convincing, we fear she might hurt her wild-eyed self, her jaw seemingly about to burst out of her skin.

This being a David Cronenberg film, that would come as no surprise. But Cronenberg has long since moved on from the "body horror" for which he was once known — with such films as "The Fly," "Scanners" or "Crash" — and longtime fans may be more shocked to find that "A Dangerous Method" is essentially a period drama, with elegant turn-of-the-19th-century costumes, eloquent dialogue and picaresque, perfectly-trimmed gardens that wouldn't seem out of place in a Merchant Ivory film.

Based on a stage play by Christopher Hampton, "A Dangerous Method" is set in Zurich, 1904, and follows Sabina Spielrein (Knightley) as she is committed to a clinic and undergoes treatment by budding psychoanalyst Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Jung decides to try Sigmund Freud's bold new "talking cure" — i.e., psychotherapy — and the results are successful enough that he travels to Vienna to meet the man himself, played by Viggo Mortensen. If Mortensen was the heavy in Cronenberg's last film, "Eastern Promises," he plays the intellectual heavyweight here, charming and cajoling Jung into his orbit.