Cold Souls
Review
by Anthony Morris
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Cold Souls
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In Cold Souls
actor Paul Giamatti (Paul Giamatti) finds a way to eliminate the
struggles that come with an artistic temperament: he has his soul
extracted.
Desperate for a way to play the lead in Uncle Vanya
without collapsing under the plays dramatic weight, Giamatti books
himself in for a soul extraction and comes out the other side a
soulless husk.
Well, not entirely soulless – they only manage
to extract around 95% of the soul, leaving enough behind to keep him
animated – but it's more than enough to do the job.
Unfortunately,
now he's saying the wrong thing at gatherings and giving cornball
performances that leave his fellow actors appalled. Clearly he needs
some soul to make it through the day, but with his own soul (revealed
upon extraction to be roughly the size and shape of a chickpea) not up
to the job, he decides to try on someone else's.
Next stop the
sordid world of Russian soul smuggling, where factory workers souls'
are repackaged as poets' while a gangsters girlfriend demands the soul
of Al Pacino to boost her acting career... but has to make do with Paul
Giamatti's.
For all the talk of souls this is a fairly
lightweight film that works best as a dry comedy. The mundane nature of
the soul extraction business constantly throws up unexpected laughs,
the soulless Giamatti's appalling acting is played perfectly and his
frantic desperation throughout the film is constantly amusing.
Only
when this film explores the more thoughtful side of its brilliant
central concept does the road turns rocky. Soul smuggling and soul
swapping sounds a lot more interesting than it turns out to be, and
while the gritty realism of the Russian process makes for a nice
contrast with the hi-class dentist's office that is their New York
operation, that's as deep as the insights go.
Then the story's
final act winds down without much closure or revelation: for all the
metaphysical depth promised by a world were people can literally sell
their souls, by the end this film proves to be a little short of soul
itself.
2.5 out
of 5
Cold Souls
Australian release: 26th November,
2009
Official
Site: Cold Souls
Cast: Paul Giamatti, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, David Strathairn, Katheryn Winnick
Director: Sophie Barthes
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