Cold Souls: Existential Science-Fiction

If you’re only reading the synopsis, it’s easy to see why so many
lazy critics have compared Cold Souls to Being John
Malkovich: Paul Giamatti stars as an actor named Paul Giamatti,
whose soul is tormented by the kind of showy existential angst that
commonly strikes actors, so he visits a laboratory that he reads about
in the New Yorker that specializes in the removal and storage of
souls. There’s enough postmodern science-fiction weirdness in that
premise to superficially resemble Malkovich, but Souls is
more rooted in the surrealism and social commentary of Gogol. (When the
film came to SIFF in June, director Sophie Barthes remarked that the
title was intended to echo Dead Souls.)

Barthes is a startlingly assured first-time director: The production
values are impeccable (the soul-removal facility is all gorgeous
minimalism, smooth white and glass), and she coaxes better-than-average
performances out of even dependably intelligent actors like Giamatti
and David Strathairn. As a soulless Giamatti hilariously tries in vain
to act in a Broadway production of Uncle Vanya, he comes to
understand what he has given up and then decides to pursue his missing
soul to Russia. You get the sense that these locations and these
concepts have never been put to film before in quite such a playfully
considerate way.

It’s a real pleasure to see thoughtful, satirical low-budget science
fiction in an American film, especially one with such a European
sensibility. This is a very literary film and a very Russian film. And,
yes, if you’re worried, the fact that it is literary and Russian means
that it is a slow movie. But it’s the very best kind of slow movie,
lingering unselfconsciously on the idea of what it means to have a
soul. You don’t often get to see movies tackle these kinds of Big
Questions with such skill and aplomb; it’s undeniably refreshing.