Surreal Souls a Weighty Comedy

Paul Giamatti (playing himself) isn’t doing very well. He’s in the middle of preparing for a new Broadway production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and the strain is showing, this descent into Russian pain and ennui almost more than his soul can bear.

Paul Giamatti in Samuel Goldwyn Films' Cold Souls

After reading an article in the New Yorker, the actor decides to do something about that pesky soul weighing him down. Turns out a new company is offering a new service called, “Soul Storage,” their administrator Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) assuring him the procedure is perfectly safe and will help him in a multitude of ways.

While at first things seem great, Paul soon discovers that in order to do his job and tap into his character he needs the pain and suffering his soul exerts upon him. But upon returning to the facility to reclaim it he is horrified to discover it missing. Next thing he knows he’s heading to Moscow with lovely soul courier Nina (Dina Korzun) to get it back, the Russian mafia discovering beaucoup bucks can be made in the underground trafficking of stolen souls.

Festival favorite Cold Souls is just as loony as it sounds. But just because the description feels a bit like a multinational Being John Malkovich that doesn’t mean writer and director Sophie Barthes’ debut isn’t an original. If anything, other than having a well known actor playing himself becoming involved in a head-scratching mystery that bewilders the mind there isn’t much here that’s all that similar. While funny, there is weight to this film’s mystery, the questions of human morality and spiritual duality ones that would make both Chekhov and Dostoyevsky proud.

I will admit that portions do drag. I also didn’t think the parts dealing with Nina’s uploading and downloading of souls is as well explored as it could have been (every time a person gets fitted with another soul, a small piece of it remains upon removal and those tiny shards add up over time). I also think Bartes lets things get a tad too cheeky, scenes between Giamatti and his wife (a game Emily Watson) going a bit too far south to feel genuine.

Still, there is a lot here to love, chief amongst them being the star himself. Giamatti is a hoot, giving a full-bodied performance that’s nothing close to a caricature of his own persona. Watching him practice the play, one time with his own soul, another without one and a final with that of what he thinks is a Russian poet, is flat-out remarkable, only an actor of his caliber able to give such a rich variety of portraits in such a short amount of screen time.

More than this, though, is how deftly Barthes is able to whittle in discussions about human sacrifice and personal responsibility into her thinly satirical sci-fi narrative. Her film talks about the soul in terms I think just about anyone no matter what their race, creed, religion or political sensibility is going to be able to understand, the director starting an intelligent debate but having the belief in the strength of her material to let viewers settle it between themselves.

On a technical level, it helps immensely that the movie looks and sounds just about perfect. Beth Mickle’s (Half Nelson) production design, in particular, is outstanding. She gives the film just enough of a futuristic sheen that you believe the more fantastical elements, grounding everything else in a modern world authenticity that’s immediately recognizable. Everything has a tangible look and feel to it that’s oddly comforting, all of it almost fooling me to believe soul storage itself is an actual newfangled 21^st Century industry.

I hope Cold Souls finds an audience. It’s inventive and different, told with an intelligence that’s been pretty hard to come by in 2009. It’s also pretty darn funny, the film running on a boldly surreal energy that’s constantly invigorating. For a debut, Barthes has done a pretty solid job, waiting to see what she’s got up her sleeve next as intriguing a mystery as the weight of the human soul itself.

- Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle