Review of Cold Souls (2009) by Chris W — 12 Jun 2012

If you mix vintage Woody Allen with some of the works of Charlie Kaufman (especially Being John Malkovich), then you basically get this movie...and that's not a bad thing, especially since this film didn't feel like a total rip-off.

Actor Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti who, while rehearsing for Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, feels his soul become burdened under the weight of the material. To remedy the situation, he goes to a company that extracts and stores people's stores. You can also swap out your soul for someone else's if you so desire. Now soulless, Giamatti is able to get through the play, but now he also finds life without his own soul more intoelrable than before.

He tries to go get his soul back, but through a snafu, his soul has been taken and sold on the black market and is now being used by a Russian soap opera actress in St. Petersburg. With the help of the "soul mule" Giamatti goes to Russia to reclaim what's his, in a new twist on the term soul searching.

This is a wild concept, and, though the end result is pretty polarizing, I found it to be a lot of fun. It is a very cold and clinical film, and while there is humor, it is extremely dry and dark in nature. There are a couple of parts that are legitimately laugh out loud funny, but the bulk of the humor is very offbeat.

What keeps the film from beign a total rip-off is that things are more accessible here than they are with some od Kaufman's works. Sure, there's his influence on the material, but it definitely holds up as being it's own kind of thing. It also helps that the actors give some wonderful performances, especially Giamatti who has to portray himself with and without his own soul (and yes, there are differences, no matter how subtle). David Strathairn is also fun as the head of the soul extraction company, and for me it was nice to see Lauren Ambrose as the doctor's assistant, though I wish she'd had more screentime and had mroe to do. Emily Watson adds some weight to the proceedings in a small but important role as Paul's wife, but for me, the two standouts other than Giamatti are Dina Korzun as the mule and Katheryn Winnick as the Russian actress.

All in all, this is an enjoyable and really well done film. I may be overly enthusiastic, but I can't help it. The film just really spoke to me, and was just the thing I needed to watch after a sleepless night before a super long day at work.