Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian (2013)Movies

‘Tell a dream, lose a reader” is the Henry James advice that the makers of “Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” should have heeded.

The title character in this true story is a Blackfoot Indian (Benicio del Toro) who, in 1948, is suffering migraines and vision problems perhaps resulting from an injury suffered during World War II. Doctors at a Topeka, Kan., Veterans Affairs hospital can’t find anything physically wrong with him, so they call in a European-born New Yorker (Mathieu Amalric), who is an anthropologist, an expert on Indian cultures and also a dabbler in Freudian analysis.

Del Toro overdoes the anguish to the point of looking like he’s playing advanced constipation,...