William Bibbiani Reviews Cold Souls!
A quick Google search tells us that Oscar Wilde once said, “Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you,” and it’s true. Of course, your actual soul can be removed for a nominal fee… at least, that’s the premise of Cold Souls, the new film from writer/director Sophie Barthes. In Barthes’ quirky vision of the present, your very soul can be removed in an outpatient procedure designed to alleviate psychological turmoil, and while this premise raises an almost infinite number of metaphysical, psychological and spiritual questions, Barthes seems reluctant to address any of them head on, resulting an interesting but cold, almost soulless film despite great performances from Academy Award-nominees Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn and Emily Watson.
Paul Giamatti (Cinderella Man), in an inspired bit of casting, plays Paul Giamatti (American Splendor), a decidedly Paul Giamatti-ish character who agonizes over his performance in a production of Uncle Vanya until an article in The New Yorker provides him with, possibly, the answer to all of his problems – Cold Soul Storage. Run by the only slightly kooky Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn, Good Night and Good Luck), this facility promises to extract Paul Giamatti’s soul and store it indefinitely. It turns out that the soul is like an appendix, and not actually necessary to our daily lives. But when Giamatti discovers that without a soul both his acting and his marriage are empty, apathetic affairs, he asks for his soul back, only to be offered another, more unusual proposition: He can have his soul back, but wouldn’t he like to try someone else’s on for size first?
Intriguing concepts all, and anchored by a believable and multi-layered performance from Paul Giamatti (whose wife produced, possibly so that she could be played beautifully by Emily Watson), but the film falters when it should just be getting started. After spending a large part of the film raising interesting questions about the nature of the human soul, Barthes becomes mired in repetitive, only vaguely comic plotlines when there are beautiful and abundant themes being neglected. Souls go missing, the Russian black market is involved, and while on paper it all sounds engaging or at least amusing, the pace of Cold Souls always feels out of step. Never punchy enough for a belly laugh, never dramatic enough for a good cathartic cry.
A big part of the problem is Barthes’ unwillingness to define what a soul actually is. The loveable Dr. Flintstein himself admits that the study of the human soul is not an exact science, but why couldn’t it have been? If Barthes was willing to make the narrative leap that the human soul has been discovered by science, why not take the next logical step and explain what that means? It’s difficult to fully empathize with Paul Giamatti’s loss when we don’t understand exactly what has gone missing, particularly when, without any kind of factual basis for these procedures, we can’t even be entirely sure that the whole film isn’t about an elaborate placebo effect.
That said, Sophie Barthes does deserve a small medal for not turning the concept of Cold Souls into some kind of Christian allegory, but without the narrative focus that kind of ulterior motive brings we’re left with a film that has a lot on its mind but no interest in taking most of it to a logical or particularly compelling conclusion. The result is a film that’s full of promise, but lacks an engaging soul of its own. Was Charlie Kaufman’s unavailable?
Cold Souls, PG-13, written & directed by Sophie Barthes, starring Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Dina Korzun, Katheryn Winnick, Lauren Ambrose and Emily Watson, opens in limited release on August 7th, 2009.
