Cold Souls

Cold Souls - Written and directed by Sophie Barthes, starring Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, and Dina Korzun - Rated PG-13

Eric Harris - www.canneltoncritic.com

While ostensibly packaged as a comedy, this quirky movie from writer-director Sophie Barthes is placed so wildly off-centre that it seems misguided to try to pigeonhole it at all.

If forced you might place it in the same bracket as similarly eccentric comedy-dramas Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind - but in truth all these films have in common is their refusal to stick to Hollywood's worn formulas.

In the case of Cold Souls, however, its quirkiness works both for and against it. There's undoubtedly an intriguing spark behind its unusual storyline, and there are some gloriously weird flourishes, but the end result mixes too many genres to be fully satisfying.

Is this a comedy? A drama? A thriller? A sci-fi morality tale?

Cold Souls is all of these and more, and it means that it's tough to become engaged in such a purposefully weird tale. It's still funny and thought-provoking, but there's a lack of emotional involvement that ultimately makes it hard to love.

In typically postmodern fashion Paul Giamatti plays himself, struggling to come to terms with his role in a forthcoming production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. The role is forcing him to mine the depths of his already considerable existential angst, and his performance is suffering for it. As opening night nears he's still desperately grappling with both the character and the emptiness of his own life.

When his agent first mentions an article in The New Yorker about a company that offers soul extractions Giamatti treats it as a joke, but when he becomes desperate he has no other option but to check out this unconventional surgical procedure.

All goes well at first - especially once he rents the soul of a Russian poet to help with his performance - but when the time comes to return his soul to his body matters suddenly take a disturbing turn. His soul has been stolen from the storage facility, and Paul Giamatti has no choice but to chase it across the ocean to Russia, where he wrangles with a band of Soviet soul-smugglers.

David Strathairn plays the doctor who extracts his soul, while Emily Watson plays Giamatti's wife (please note that they aren't married in real life - the postmodern parallels end here), but it's Paul Giamatti himself who drags this unusual tale from the realms of weirdness towards something resembling an engaging drama.

Giamatti tackles all the script's eccentric turns with subtlety and humour, and it's hard to think of another actor who could have pulled this off - only Phillip Seymour Hoffman or a younger Woody Allen might have come close.

Ultimately Giamatti's performance isn't quite enough to save Cold Souls from its own cleverness, but it certainly provides us with one of the most intriguingly odd performances of the last few years. And as comedy-drama-thrillers-about-Russian-soul-smugglers go, this is certainly one of the best.

Starring:  Paul Giamatti, David Straitharn, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson

Review:  This is a movie that I thought was intriguing the first I saw of it.  I saw a trailer a while back and thought it looked worth checking out, and didn't get around to it until now.  This movie is supposed to be a dark comedy and I can see where that comes from.  The main character, Paul Giamatti, is a tortured soul who is battling with the role he is playing in his most recent play 'Uncle Vanya.'  Paul is finding the weight of the character extremely heavy and it is affecting his life away from the stage.  When he thinks he has finally reached his breaking point he reads about a new fad of "soul storage."  "Is your soul weighing you down?" the add questions.  Paul begins to think perhaps this is his answer to change something that will allow him to do the play and still remain normal in his every day life. 

Paul decides to take the plunge and have his soul extracted and placed in storage for the duration of the play. However, Paul quickly learns that living "soul-less" is not all it's cracked up to be.  He is finding it hard to have feelings or generally care about anything.  Paul decides he wants to have his soul back, only problem is, his soul was stolen and sold on the black market.  The rest of the movie involves Paul's search to get his soul back. 

The crux of this movie rests on Paul Giamatti's performance, which he nails in my opinion.  I cannot imagine what living life without a soul would be like, but I imagine it would be very similar to what he portrays in this movie.  You keep on going living your normal life, but there just always seems to be something missing.  Nothing quite feels right and there is a certain emptiness that comes with having no soul.  Even his ability to act suffers, which was the whole reason he had his soul extracted in the first place. 

I especially liked the approach the movie decided to take towards the soul storage.  It was not something revolutionary and crazy and a huge deal, it was just something that was discovered and a very matter-of-fact approach was taken.  This is just an option people have and something people do now, like a new age oxygen bar or something.  Ultimately, the movie didn't quite feel complete as it was small in scope, but Giamatti's performance and the originality of story are enough to make it worth your time.

Cold Souls is an off-beat intelligent, imaginative story that combines elements of sci-fi, drama and mystery. It's hard to describe - Surreal comedy? It doesn't really fit in any specific category. It's funny and sad at the same time.

Paul Giamatti delivers an incredible performance, mastering a broad range of emotions and making his character delightfully amusing and sometimes heartbreaking. The tone reminded me of Kafka, Julio Cortazar and at times Woody Allen and Kaufman. I found myself thinking about it for a long time after I saw it.

"Moon" and "Cold Souls" are refreshing the sci-fi genre this summer. There was something in both films I haven't came across in many other movies recently, a soul maybe... something different for sure.

Vincent Snavely