Mahler on the Couch

Holland, 1910. When he finds out his wife Alma is having an affair with young architect Walter Gropius, Gustav Mahler leaves for the Netherlands to get advice from psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. After hearing the revelations of the famous Austrian composer and conductor, the therapist soon finds the crux of the problem. Having decided nine years earlier to marry Mahler, Alma Schindler, then the muse of Klimt, reluctantly renounced her ambitions as a musician and painter to devote herself to her much older husband’s career. Freud says it was just a matter of time before the young woman’s frustration would express itself, even if it meant risking strife in her marital life.