FEATURE FILM / 2009

La première séance

For the first time, filmed by psychoanalyst Gérard Miller, famous and ordinary patients speak in a documentary about their “first session” of analysis—the one that sets the course for a personal journey that may last for years. Among them are Jacques Weber, Charles Berling, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, Marie Darrieussecq, and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy—who is the only wife of a sitting head of state to speak candidly about why and how she has been in analysis for the past eight years. But why did all these “analysands” go to see a psychoanalyst? What happened during their first session? Why did they continue? And why did some, like Karl Lagerfeld or Claude Chabrol, become critics of Freudian theory? The inside of the consulting room, where everyone dreams of being a fly on the wall and hearing what is said, but also… everything that goes on around, before, and after.