Barely has David Cronenberg's publicist entered a lavish hotel suite off Vienna's Ringstrasse than she breaks the bad news: the Canadian filmmaker is not going to shake hands with anyone today.
It can't be arrogance: Cronenberg has long been known as a comparatively amiable conversationalist so why is the 69-year-old avoiding human contact? Is it hypochondria? Is he trying to avoid revealing his mental state through the firmness of his grip? Or could it be a snub similar to Sigmund Freud's refusal to shake hands with Sandor Ferenczi in September 1932? The slight traumatised Freud's estranged psychoanalytical associate, who died six months later reportedly still aggrieved.
It turns out to be something more mundane: what began as a mild case of the sniffles at home had turned into a full-blown cold when he arrived in Vienna for a screening of his latest film, A Dangerous Method, at the Austrian capital's annual international film festival, and he's not keen to spread it.
Still, it's difficult not to regard Cronenberg's quirks through a psychoanalytical prism, given that he's unveiling a film about the pioneers of that field in the city which propelled them to worldwide fame.
Set at the beginning of the 20th century, A Dangerous Method examines the troubled relationship between Freud and Carl Jung as they develop a treatment they call 'the talking cure' - an approach we now know as psychoanalysis.
The Freudian approach of reading the subconscious has remained controversial over the past century, and Cronenberg addresses this in the film when Freud (played by Viggo Mortensen) says to Jung (Michael Fassbender): 'In 100 years' time, our work will still be rejected.' Even Jung has qualms about Freud's concepts, when he asks whether the medical establishment's discomfort is caused by Freud's 'system of exclusive sexual interpretation of clinical material'.
