Entertainment

COUCH TOMATOES

EMPATHY

(three stars)

Shrink rap.

Running time: 92 minutes. Not rated (mature subject matter). At the Film Forum, Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue.

YOU’LL never think the same pouring your heart out to a psychoanalyst once you’ve seen Amie Siegel’s genre-bending “Empathy.”

A mix of documentary and fiction, it demystifies the profession in delightful fashion.

Twenty-nine-year-old Siegel interviews three real-life shrinks, all male, who pontificate from comfy leather chairs.

Then she weaves in the fictional tale of a voiceover actress named Lia (Gigi Buffington) who is seeing a shrink, along with the stories of women auditioning for the role of Lia in “Empathy.”

Sounds complicated, but director/poet Siegel keeps matters fluid and accessible. And quite funny.

“Empathy” opens with the camera fixed on an empty chair. In the background, we hear the analyst to whom the chair belongs talking with a patient.

“It’s a bad day. Do the best you can,” he says – advice that hardly requires a doctorate.

The film proceeds in equally candid fashion, with the pipe-puffing analysts showing themselves to be much less all-knowing about life than they should be.

Freud wouldn’t be pleased.