The Society of Analytical Psychology
In Partnership with
EVERYMAN
IN THERAPY
Nicholas Roeg’s haunting and enigmatic masterpiece, “Don’t Look Now” (1973) is adapted from and based upon Daphne du Maurier’s short story. The film is a delicate and profound depiction of a mature couple struggling with the traumatic loss of their child, its effect on their relationship and their differing attempts to process overwhelming mutual grief. Alongside this, the film explores forms of seeing, the way we see and don’t want to see, blindness and sight, prophecy and foreseeing, illusion and delusion, and the intensities of obsession.
Du Maurier takes us once again on a voyage of the unfamiliar, and Roeg’s masterful use of non-linear sequences, fractured and fast-cutting editing and subliminal visual cues evoke a dreamlike quality and a disorienting metaphorical darkness. She develops her fascination with identity, the challenges of ageing, doubleness and the uncanny, locating the drama in Venice that seeps into our unconscious as she explores the dark underside of human nature. Venice in her story represents something otherworldly and sinister, a doom-laden shadowy place replete with emptiness, dark labyrinthine alleyways and desolate streets, suggestive of memories, strangeness, the intangible and the unknown.
These aspects and more will be discussed following the film in a dialogue between Rupert Tower (Jungian analyst and Grandson of the late Daphne du Maurier) and Dr Laura Varnam (Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature, University College, Oxford) and chaired by Adam Reynolds (Head of Brand Partnerships, Everyman). Do join us!
Booking page will be available soon!
