Review of Cold Souls (2009) by Philip B — 04 Dec 2009

No-one does better Charlie Kaufman scripts than Charlie Kaufman. However, this hasn't stopped Sophie Barthes from plunging into the cerebral depths of Kaufmanesque neuroses to unearth Cold Souls, a bizarre little film that toys with some fascinating ideas only to mash them up into a disappointing plot that belongs in another film altogether.

Paul Giamatti plays, well, Paul Giamatti. Yes, the character is named Paul Giamatti (stop, my sides!). He's starring in a production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya and the emotional strife of his character remains with him after rehearsals end. To rid himself of this misery, Paul goes to a clinic run by David Strathairn's Dr. Flintstein. The clinic specializes in removing souls for storage until the client wants it back.

This premise would be enough material to construct a rather serious film around the nature of the soul and emotion. Instead, Barthes squanders the chance to make something thoroughly thought-provoking by introducing a plot strand about Russians smuggling souls back and forth across the Atlantic. When Giamatti discovers his soul has been stolen, he takes off for Russia to get it back. This is the point when the film descends into farce-cum-buddy-pic as Giamatti teams up with Dina Korzun's 'soul mule' to get his soul back. This shift in plot distances the audience from the characters as the premise gets more and more unlikely. We go from debating the purpose of the soul to chasing after Russian traffickers without suggesting any answers for the debate of the first half. Purpose, film, give us purpose!

Giamatti does his sad-sack routine, which suits this film just fine. Dina Korzun offers a sympathetic performance, while Emily Watson (as Giamatti's wife) struggles with an underwritten role. The whole film is shot in chilly blues and whites, and distances us even more from the already elusive ideas introduced in the first half of the film. Cold Souls deserves praise for presenting original ideas to us, but will ultimately disappoint for boxing these ideas in an unoriginal plot. A missed opportunity.