Review of Cold Souls (2009) by Benjamin F — 18 Feb 2010

Cold Souls is a challenging film to review. Viewers are, obviously, rather divided on its quality. You could make an effective argument as to its quality or lack thereof, certainly, but as such, as far as I'm concerned, it's not bad, but it's not great, either. It does, however, fall into good territory, in my view, as I came away entertained, even if I wasn't blown away.

It's fairly obvious that Sophie Barthes was trying to channel Charlie Kaufman with this, her debut film. She doesn't entirely succeed. This is no Eternal Sunshine or Synecdoche, New York. We never really quite see in the characters what it means to lose one's soul - only glimpses. We don't get into anybody's head. We're largely outside observers in this comedy of existential torment. We watch the external details and aftermath of Giamatti's removing his soul and but a glimpse in the end into the images his soul consisted of. Largely the polar opposite of Eternal Sunshine, where the focus was very much on what it meant for Joel to erase Clementine with relatively minimal time spent on the impact of that decision on his life in the outside world. As a result of the viewer's disconnect, everything becomes much more of a comedy than Eternal Sunshine was. The external focus in the story did, however, work where it went. The focus on soul trafficking was an interesting twist both fresh and fun to follow. And the ending, unfortunately, is lacking. I can see what Barthes was trying to do with its abrupt conclusion, but for a sudden, open ending to work - in an art house film or any other - you need to give the viewer more than she did.

The cast is excellent and carries the film the whole way through, elevating it in many ways. You really can't do much better than Paul Giamatti as leads go. Dina Korzun, though her character could've used more development by the end, turned a captivating performance herself. Emily Watson didn't get to do much, but her character was believable and important in the small role she played. David Strathairn was really funny throughout his screentime. Lauren Ambrose was adorable as usual, but didn't have much to do either. And Katheryn Winnick pretty much comes out of left field and steals scenes left and right when her character is introduced halfway through, being both lovely to watch and authentic and hilarious in her performance, Sveta being the film's outright funniest character.

With her scriptwriting inspired but messy and unsure of where it wanted to do with its emotional tone and direction, Barthes needed to wow us with what she brought to the film as a director, and she does succeed on that level. The camera moves around quite a bit, but what it captures is wonderful to lose yourself in, as we go in and out of focus with reality with the characters. I'm a sucker for blurred city lights, and the general unfocused camera shots bring an additional element of color providing Cold Souls with an appropriately dreamlike feel at times. Fantastic atmosphere, excellent direction. The soundtrack, largely melancholy and peppered with French music, complements the film perfectly as well.

All-in-all, Cold Souls is a good film. It has a great concept, and its execution is fantastic, with a great cast, great direction and cinematography, and a lovely soundtrack. Where it suffers is just in that the script probably could've used another draft or two to find more direction in itself. It needed more of an ending, more development for Nina, and a little more emotional focus to elevate itself to greatness. The rest of the elements it needed were already in place, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Sophia Barthes does next after seeing this.