By Linda Winsh=Bolard
Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti, a New York actor, who has problem with his part (Uncle Vanya). He feels that his own personality is leaking into the part, yet he does not seem to “feel” Vanya. The sympathetic director tells him he is too serious. Paul Giamatti decides to separate himself from himself, so to speak. He seeks a distance, a break from himself. On advice of his agent he is perusing The New Yorker (think snobbish and expensive) where he reads an article describing soul storage. Everybody does it.
Guided by Flintstein (David Strathairn), the Devil’s doctor, Paul stores his souls. Albeit storing your soul outside your body might have unexpected side effects. When things don’t work out, Paul is not himself, his wife claims he even smells differently not just behaves oddly, he attempts to get his soul back, but it’s gone missing. It was traded to Russia. There seems to be a merry old trade in souls, all kinds, and Dr. Flintstein offers a whole catalog of them to Paul. New soul, old man?
Forced by unfavorable circumstance caused by losing his soul, l Paul decided to admit the truth to his teary and surprised wife (Emily Watson) who asks: why did you do it? I don’t know, Max told me his mother did it, and Cynthia was thinking about it. Cynthia, react the wife.
There are plenty of such moments: the upper scale black couple so excited because “our souls will be stored together”. The Russians disappointed because they thought they got the soul of Al Pacino (Well, I am sorry things did not work with Al Pacino, reacts Paul), the reference of Paul’s soul being probably stored in a facility in New Jersey (think a snob being told it was Sleepy Hollow). Most of them are nice enough.
David Strathairn‘s performance as white haired devilish businessman trading souls is comically fine when he proclaims that such thing had never happened (losing a soul), but admits that this business is somewhat unregulated before offering a deal. It is somewhere between taking an aim at health insurance and banking.
The Russian mobster whose wife “borrowed” the soul delivered by Nina, a soul trafficker, to be better actress. Nina buys souls of poor and sick Russians and brings them for rent to US. Renting a soul will change you, you would expect this, and see it here as well. Nina’s character is never truly explored and remains confusing.
Paul Giamatti is different from what you’d expect, his part is different, and he is acting an overwrought, shallow, pretentious New Yorker who waves his hands through his hair and says to his wife when she remarks: so you are now completely soulless, No, no, I still have 5% of my soul.
Because he loses his soul early in the film, we, the audience, do not know who he was when he had it. The film relies on Paul Giamatti to act it out and on tricks such as Paul testing himself to figure out if anything has changed. He sniffs perfume, weighs himself, takes photos of himself and compares them obsessively to existing photographs. As expected, he becomes disconnected from his old self, people and society.
Emily Watson gives as fine performance as ever, understated, quiet, calm and more surprised than terrified she gets the suffering wife part nicely. She could do more. You probably will not recognize pretty, unquestioning doctor’s assistant as Kirsten Dunst.
Director Sophie Barthes is clearly under the influence of such directors as the master of pastiche Charlie Kaufman (from Being John Malkovich to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The bizarre disguised as the ordinary, executed in highly technological , antiseptic machinery, meets the not so extra ordinary lives of people who always want a bit more than they have.
It is albeit sinning where is finds sin- in pretentions and ambition (chick pea soul?). It is easier to watch than Kaufman, and sometimes funny, but is over explanatory and overdone. Quirkiness does not make up for the thinness of plot and character, poor Paul is never himself and most of the others are just passing by. Taking aim on the overused, from souls to Russia (snow and fur hats?), is tricky art that few have mastered. Sophie Barthes is not there yet.
