"For Sophie (Schell), the past is literally a foreign country; when she flies from New York to Vienna to see Alexander Scherbatov (Scofield), it is to explore that forgotten territory. For in 1919 they were both patients of Dr Freud. Together they dredge their memories, and map out not only the confessions of the couch, but also the huge historical shifts that separated them; like Freud himself, they were victims of the Nazi arrival. The film operates in much the same way as the talking cure itself; Freud's skilful probings are heard (Finlay's voice) though he is never seen; and the film makes sense of the past by the same shifting, organic, inexplicable process. A sensitive, interior film, with all the restorative power that Freud must have hoped for." CPea.

Sophie is now a divorced New Yorker of nearly 70, Alexander is a lonely widower; both still harbor resentment of Freud's treatment of their youthful "problems." Their personal narratives, shown in flashback, are poignant; Freud is an unseen but vivid presence in the therapy scences.

Dealing with psychoanalysis and passion, 1919 most certainly isn't what you may call "light entertainment". Two childhood friends meet some 50 years later in an apartment in Vienna, they visit Freud's consulting rooms [now museum] and talk about their lives. Both Alexander Scherbatov and Sophie Rubin are [fictive] patients to Sigmund Freud and we see flashbacks from their therapy sessions, interlaced with authentic film clips. Alexander is a Russian aristocrat, haunted by his incestuous longing for his sister Nina. Sophie, whos parents sent her to Freud, rejects his efforts to "cure" her from her passion for a woman.