The new Keira Knightley: ‘I want you to punish me’

Two London film actresses have been vying for the headlines at the Venice Film Festival this weekend - Keira Knightley, because she plays a masochistic beauty who enjoys being beaten by her lover (Carl Jung, no less), and Gwyneth Paltrow, whose character unwittingly sparks a deadly pandemic in Steven Soderbergh's latest thriller.

First Knightley. Her new film, says the Mail on Sunday, will come as a shock to fans used to seeing her in gentle romcoms (such as Love Actually) and stylish costume dramas (Atonement etc).

In A Dangerous Method we see her strapped to a bed while being thrashed by Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Having set out to cure her violent fits, Jung sees the light when he innocently beats the dust of her coat with a stick and she becomes aroused. "I want you to punish me," she implores him.

The film is based on Christopher Hampton's play The Talking Cure and Knightley's performance is being talked of as "Oscar bait".

Producer Jeremy Thomas said: "I always knew Keira was a great actress but I didn't know how great she could be." For the sake of those Mail readers reaching for the smelling salts, he added: "The film is not salacious and the scenes are totally justifiable."

Paltrow's movie involves no beatings but a horrible number of deaths – millions in fact – as a mystery Sars-type virus she picks up in Hong Kong begins to wipe out millions.

The thriller is chiefly notable for the sort of vast ensemble cast not seen since the 1970s when half of Hollywood gathered to make disaster movies like The Towering Inferno. Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne and Marion Cottilard are just some of the names in what the Sunday Telegraph calls "the most stellar cast in recent memory".

Paltrow looked an awful lot better in real life in Venice, where she sported a pale coral Prada dress at the premiere, than she does in the film. Her death scene, says the Telegraph, "had even hardened critics recoiling in horror". ·