Cold Souls

In the theater, the adjective Kaufmanesque refers to a play similar to the style of comedies written by George S. Kaufman. I think that in film Kaufmanesque is also a valid term, referring to the screenplays of Charlie Kaufman, who has written mind-bending work like Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaption, and Synechdoche, New York, which all deal with stretched definitions of reality. Cold Souls, written and directed by Sophie Barthes, seems like watered-down Kaufman, using an idea that he might have come up with but not utilizing it nearly as cleverly as he does.

As in Being John Malkovich, Barthes has her star, Paul Giamatti, playing himself (or a version of himself). He is an actor struggling during rehearsals of Uncle Vanya. His agent puts him on to a business that extracts the soul and then stores it, allowing one to think clearly and be unburdened by whatever burdens the soul has. Giamatti finally has it done, and is surprised when his soul turns out to be size and shape of a chickpea.

We then learn that there is an active black market for souls, and that poor people in Russia sell them. They are then transported via "mules," to the U.S., where rich people can have them implanted, choosing them much the way a woman chooses her sperm donor. When the Russian marketeer's vapid wife wants the soul of an American actor, one of the mules (Dina Korzun) steals Giamatti's, but tells her boss that it's the soul of Al Pacino. Giamatti finds he can't act without his soul, and his wife (Emily Watson) senses he's different, so he wants it back.

Much of this plays like an old Twilight Zone episode, or more precisely, an episode of The Simpsons that featured Bart selling his soul to Milhous and then desperately wanting it back. In that 22-minute cartoon more was said about what the true nature of the soul is than this film, which seemed to regard the whole thing as a mordant joke. Parts of it were engaging--I liked Giamatti acting badly without his soul--but most of it came off as a bleak, grim, small film that didn't have much to say. After watching it I have no greater idea about what the soul--if we have one--means to us, or what it does.