Movie Review - Cold Souls

Ever since the first buzz came out of this years Sundance Film Festival I have wanted to see this movie. I am a big fan of Paul Giamatti and find him to be incredibly watchable even in pedestrian films like Duplicity where he was close to the only decent thing on the screen.

Cold Souls is the definition of a 'Limited Release' film. There is no way you will find an existential comedy like this at the local multiplex which is a shame because there were some real 'laugh-out-loud' moments. Paul Giamatti plays ... Paul Giamatti (yes, himself), a famous actor who is struggling over his latest theater role as 'Uncle Vanya'. It is during this crisis of confidence he comes across an article in the New Yorker about a company, run with a certain panache by a doctor played by David Strathairn, offering the unique service of 'Soul Storage'. One of the key benefits of having your Soul extracted and stored is that it allows people to let go of their worries and concerns and get on with life (sounds like a plan to me!).

Giamatti does just this but soon finds himself embroiled in a world of Russian Soul traffickers after his own soul ends up in the body of a Russian mobsters wife who wants to be a famous American actress. What follows is his quest first to locate and then retrieve his soul from a 'Soul Mule' eventually taking him to a very cold St Petersburg. While there are plenty of Woody Allenesque laughs in the first part of the movie as we revel in Giamattis reaction to his soul being lost it is when the movie relocates to Russia that we really engage in the story. The audience delights in a classic 'fish out of water' Giamatti resplendent in a giant Russian fur hat trying to negotiate with and underworld boss. Aided by a mule sympathetic to his plight the soul retrieval is both tense and funny at the same time all helped along by the fact that as an alternative to being Soulless Giamatti has ended up with the Soul of a Russian poet while he tries to get his own back!

I really didn't know what to expect from this film other than I was intrigued by the the combination of Giamatti and French director Sophie Barthes who I knew from her 2006 film Happiness. Cold Souls somehow manages to blend angst and comedy in a way you just don't see very often and the comedy was genuine, easy and real. This wasn't a movie full of intellectual jokes referencing Camus and Chekov but instead a very accessible story about a man willing to try something different. Naturally the premise is as fictional as it gets (you won't want to eat Hummus after seeing this film!) but I think the absurdity of Soul Storage was rather the point. A rich and successful actor seeking relief from artistic tension by 'de-souling' himself? What is perhaps so amazing about what Barthes has achieved is that as an audience member we sit and take the whole thing so seriously from start to finish.

The combination of a very accomplished piece of filmmaking from a director we will hear much more of in the future and it being my favorite Giamatti performance since Sideways made this a very enjoyable movie indeed.

Rating: ****

Movie Review - Cold Souls