Surviving Life (Theory and Practice)

Eugene is an ageing man with a dull job and a marriage that has become habit. He starts dreaming about a young woman in red. He goes to a psychoanalyst not to be rid of the dream but to be able to keep having it. The analyst works at interpreting; Eugene works out how to enter the dream at will. Meanwhile his childhood opens up and he learns what actually happened to his parents. Which of the two lives is the real one stops being clear. Jan Švankmajer's film is made almost entirely from cut-out photographs, in collage animation; at the start the director explains himself that this was chosen because there was not enough money. A hundred and five minutes. Portraits of Freud and Jung come on and argue with each other.