Cold Souls

Sophie Barthes’ clever metaphysical comedy Cold Souls has been dubbed “Being Paul Giamatti” more than once since its Sundance 2009 debut. But if comparisons with the films of Charlie Kaufman are inevitable, the similarities only go so far. Sure, Paul Giamatti plays “Paul Giamatti,” another actor unwittingly embroiled in a mind-body conundrum, and there’s a semi-futuristic doctor’s office that could sit next door to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind‘s Lacuna, Inc. But Cold Souls exists on a different, surrealistic plane: more lyricism, less misanthropy. When we first see Paul, he’s performing a monologue from Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Full of chest-throbbing anguish, Giamatti can’t pin down the performance. His director tells him that he’s taking the role too seriously; his agent recommends that he check out a recent article headlined “Unburdening Made Easy,” which suggests a way out of Giamatti’s unbearable weightness of being: a procedure that can remove one’s soul. Soon Giamatti finds himself in the Soul Storage offices of David Strathairn’s Dr. Flintstein and ends up in the spherical “soul extractor.” Giamatti’s ensuing adventure is mostly absurdist fun. First, there’s the initial liberation of soulnessness, followed by its hollowed-out horror, and then the quest to retrieve his soul. Giamatti doesn’t give into caricature, but is his dedication enough to make Cold Souls more than just a sophisticated romp? Only in the film’s last ambiguous, evocative image does Barthes finally transcend the material and arrive at something beautiful and ineffable.