'Souls' on Ice: With Giamatti: Loopy but Nice
By Ann Hornaday
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, Aug. 21, 2009
One of the best things about "Cold Souls," Sophie Barthes's futuristic comedy about a man who puts his soul into storage, is how it depicts the experience of fame in New York. As Paul Giamatti, playing an actor named Paul Giamatti, makes his way down a Manhattan street or waits for an appointment in a lobby, the fact of his celebrity subtly registers on the people around him who are far too sophisticated to make a fuss, but still stop and say "Isn't that . . . ?" to their companions.
These pitch-perfect moments, as well as Giamatti's performance as an artist driven to a personal and creative brink, make "Cold Souls," if not always coherent, at least compelling. A cerebral trip through the existential looking glass in the tradition of Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich") -- with a dash of Woody Allen thrown in for good measure -- "Cold Souls" finally suffers from the comparisons it so clearly invites.
In fact, Barthes was reportedly inspired to write "Cold Souls" after she had a dream starring Allen himself, in which he has his soul extracted only to discover that it's the precise shape and size of a chickpea. If she couldn't get Allen himself, she certainly succeeded in finding his doppelganger in Giamatti, here playing an actor suffering a midlife, mid-career crisis of anxiety and neurosis that manifests itself in his inability to play the title role in "Uncle Vanya." Reading the New Yorker after a near-breakdown at a rehearsal, he comes upon an article about a company that extracts and stores human souls for a reasonable fee. Giamatti looks in his Yellow Pages, and there it is, listed just under "Self Storage." Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
Convinced that his misery would somehow abate without the burden of his own soul, Giamatti travels to Roosevelt Island and the pristine office of Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), who advises Giamatti that "a twisted soul is like a tumor -- better to remove it!" Meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Nina (Dina Korzun) arrives at Kennedy Airport from Russia, on uncertain business. As Giamatti's path crosses with Nina's, "Cold Souls" turn into something of a philosophical romance, giving new meaning to the notion of completing each other.
Barthes has enlisted a cast of fine actors to give life to her loop-de-loopy idea, chief among them Giamatti, here delivering a funny, nuanced performance -- especially when he must convincingly deliver a poor one. (Emily Watson plays his patient but understandably confused wife.) "Cold Souls," which has been filmed in lovely muted tones by the gifted cinematographer Andrij Parekh, takes on a particularly dreamlike quality when the story travels to St. Petersburg, where Giamatti finds himself battling for, well, his own soul.
As for what, precisely, constitutes said soul, Barthes seems content to solve that enduring mystery by conflating it with vague recollections and sense-memories.
More than a wordy disquisition on the meaning of life, Barthes seems more interested in tiptoeing a delicate, not always clear line between moody tone poem and surreal screwball comedy. It's a tension she largely succeeds in sustaining, even if "Cold Souls" finally begins to strain under its conceits. Barthes is making her feature debut with "Cold Souls," which might account for why it often recalls too many other movies; to the degree that she conveys a wit and vision all her own, it's cause for celebration.
Cold Souls (101 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema and AMC Loews Shirlington, in English and Russian with subtitles) is rated PG-13 for nudity and brief, strong profanity.
