Jimmy P. (2013)

Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian is a 2013 Franco-American drama film directed by French film director Arnaud Desplechin.

Jimmy P. stars Benicio del Toro as the titular character, Jimmy Picard, a Blackfoot Native American who has returned to Montana from World War II and suffers debilitating symptoms. Mathieu Amalric, who has appeared in most of Arnaud Desplechin’s films, plays George Devereux, a French doctor of Hungarian-Jewish background. He is called in as a specialist in ethnology and psychoanalysis. Jimmy P. is primarily based on Devereux's book, Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian (1951). The film is set at a veterans' hospital in Topeka, Kansas, during the pioneering days of psychoanalysis in the United States.

Jimmy P. was released commercially in Europe in September 2013, and was released in the US and Canada in early 2014. It received a nomination for the Palme d'Or at 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and in January 2014, three nominations at the 39th César Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Synopsis

Après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Jimmy Picard, un vétéran nord-amérindien de la tribu des Pieds-Noirs, est admis au Winter Veteran Hospital de Topeka au Kansas fondé par le psychiatre Karl Menninger. Souffrant de maux de tête aigus, d'absences et de crises d'angoisse incontrôlables qu'aucun médecin ne réussit à relier à une cause physiologique liée à son accident survenu en France, il est pris en charge par Georges Devereux, un ethnologue français originaire d'Europe centrale, spécialiste des cultures amérindiennes.

Actors