Mahler on the Couch Trailer (2010)

The trailer for Mahler on the Couch which will debut at the 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival.

Percy Adlon, who delighted audiences with Bagdad Café and Sugarbaby, is back in rare form with Mahler on the Couch. Mahler is none other than the great turn of the century composer Gustav Mahler; the couch belongs to no less than Sigmund Freud, whom the freaked-out maestro, desperate for help, tracks down in Holland after discovering that his beloved wife Alma has had an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius.

Adlon's passionate and witty film, which he co-wrote and directed with his son Felix, is a portrait of the fascinating, fevered, and doomed marriage between these two powerful partners. The headstrong Alma—played by the fiercely sensual Barbara Romaner—both worships her much older lover and chafes under his domination. Avoiding stuffy biopic conventions, Mahler on the Couch honors the complexity and humanity of both of its tormented lovers, keeping our sympathies in a constant state of flux. Both moving and surprisingly funny (the sessions with Freud are sly gems), the Adlons' sensual feast of a movie is propelled by Mahler's sublime music, conducted for the film by Esa-Pekka Salonen.