Unconscious Review

Reviews

Sep 15th 2006 By Total Film

A breathless, vibrant sex comedy, Unconscious puts the farce into Freud. Set in Barcelona in 1913, just before the great Austrian headshrinker arrives to deliver a lecture, it follows Alma (Leonor Watling), a psychoanalyst’s wife, as she searches for her missing husband (Alex Brendemühl) helped by brother-in-law Salvador (Luis Tosar). Throwing together mistaken identities, huge phalluses and slips of the tongue, it proves Sigmund’s theory: sex is at the centre of everything. Although the detective story quickly runs out of steam, there are clever-clever gags on everything from Wuthering Heights to silent porno flicks. It’s the leads who gel this together – a radiantly sexy, heavily pregnant Watling playing brilliantly off the uptight Tosar, who looks disconcertingly like James Nesbitt’s mutton-chopped Spanish cousin. It might not stand much analysis, but it’s hysterical (in every sense) while it lasts.