Cold Souls (**3/4)

I was thinking of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as I watched this. Actually, I was thinking of it before that, because I already knew this was about having your soul removed, whereas Eternal Sunshine was about having your memories removed. The main character is Paul Giamatti, who is played by…Paul Giamatti. It put me in mind of Being John Malkovich, where Malkovich too played a version of himself. Both of those movies had screenplays by Charlie Kaufman, and so maybe it set Cold Souls up for a unflattering comparison. Sophie Barthes, a first-time writer and director, is no match for Kaufman in the writing department, nor for visual stylists Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine) as a director, although she does have some nice shots of Coney Island, and of the frozen waters of St. Petersburg, Russia.

Russia comes into the story peripherally, as Giamatti (the character) is rehearsing for a Chekhov play, and related stress leads him to want to ditch his soul. And Russia comes into the story more directly too. For you don’t just have your soul erased, like the memories of Eternal Sunshine, but have them removed and saved, in bottles. And it turns out there is a black market, with Russia sending couriers (“mules”) to smuggle them like drugs. The main story is about Giamatti’s regret at having had his extraction, and his adventures trying to get it reversed.

To return to my inevitable comparison: Eternal Sunshine was extremely funny; this can’t help but be amusing, given the premise, but that’s all. Eternal Sunshine had an interesting philosphical element, in that it made you ask yourself if you would want to have unpleasant memories erased. Here I was never that clear on exactly what was supposed to be in the soul. (There’s no religious themes in the movie.) Having it removed supposedly makes you not worry, but with or without one Giamatti pretty much seems like Giamatti. Even when he’s not supposed to be worrying, he’s worrying about that too. And speaking of Giamatti, Barthes could’ve had more fun playing on the differences between real and movie Giamatti, or taking off further from the running semi-gag in which it is noted that he is somewhat less famous than, say, Al Pacino.

Finally, the comparison with Eternal Sunshine finds Cold Souls wanting because I had less of an emotional connection. The premise is kind of clever, and it’s well-plotted, but it certainly is not evocative in the way it perhaps could have been.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 and reviewed 9/10/09