IFC Films nabs “Jimmy P” Benicio Del Toro’s Cannes drama

PanARMENIAN.Net - IFC Films has acquired from Worldview Entertainment the U.S. distribution rights to the Arnaud Desplechin-directed Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, Deadline said.

The film, which stars Benicio Del Toro and Mathieu Amalric, premiered at Cannes and just screened at the New York Film Festival.

Desplechin and Kent Jones and Julie Peyr adapted the script from the George Devereux book Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian. It is about the author’s relationship and multidisciplinary study of Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Indian, who fought in World War II and suffered from psychological distress.

Pascal Cauchetuex and Jennifer Roth produced while Worldview’s Christopher Woodrow and Molly Conners executive produced with Patrick Milling Smith and Ben Limberg.

IFC is expected to release the film in early 2014.

“An American story that only the French could make, Jimmy P., Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian cries out for its own niche, one it will hopefully find beyond festival appreciation. The strange but true story of a Native American who underwent Freudian psychotherapy with a brilliant Romanian analyst after World War II proves a good fit for director Arnaud Desplechin, who has swung between documentary and fictional work throughout his career, and has never hesitated to take on a difficult project.

But turning one man’s analysis into filmed entertainment is an offbeat idea to say the least. The whole project is saved largely thanks to the subtext of ethnic discrimination that runs through the film, and two riveting central performances, which overcome a wobbly start to find emotional balance by the final reel.

In early scenes Del Toro devotes so much visible effort to acting the part that his performance is distracting, even off-putting. But as the film goes on, he becomes more natural in a complex role, leaving the viewer with the memory of a powerful and unusual mind, a man one would like to know. Amalric, who played a mental patient for Desplechin in Kings and Queen, is spectacularly likable in all his guises, except as the lover of a sophisticated married woman (Gina McKee) who comes out of nowhere and disappears in the same direction, leaving the audience to wonder what that was all about. Surely the screen time could have been put to better use sketching in some of the mysteries of this fascinating figure, a founder of ethno-anthropology,” a review published at The Hollywood Reporter said.