After seeing how "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" use their sci-fi premises to enhance and extract romantic or existential story-lines, I found "Cold Souls" to be lacking in dramatic consequence and over-flowing in technicalities surrounding it's particular sci-fi premise.
In this film the actor Paul Giamatti plays the actor Paul Giamatti, who decides to have his soul stored away for two weeks, while he works on a difficult theater role. When his soul is stolen from the soul storage company, he ventures out to find it, thereby meeting a Russian woman, Nina (Dina Korzun), who works as a soul transporter.
This plot results in bizarrely funny scenes, for example when Paul accidentally drops his soul on the floor, and the manager crawls around nervously to search the carpet for it as if he were looking for, while afraid to step on, a contact lense.
The film also contains many suggestions as to the consequences of separating yourself from your soul. However, the film is inconsistent in these suggestions - do you have feelings or not, when you are without a soul? Do you have a conscience or not?
After having spent many scenes throughout the first half movie on Paul's rehearsals in the theater, director Sophie Barthes leaves this theme altogether for the second half.
Whereas the two above-mentioned movies keep the technicalities of their premise in the background, this movie spends many lines explaining how souls leave residue etc., without adding to the story.
I was entertained by this movie and it inspired a somewhat soul-searching conversation with my co-viewer. I found Giamatti's performance pleasant and was quite fascinated by Dina Korzun's quiet, almost cool humbleness as Nina. But when it came to the story's personal and existential development, I was left with too many blanks.
In this film the actor Paul Giamatti plays the actor Paul Giamatti, who decides to have his soul stored away for two weeks, while he works on a difficult theater role. When his soul is stolen from the soul storage company, he ventures out to find it, thereby meeting a Russian woman, Nina (Dina Korzun), who works as a soul transporter.
This plot results in bizarrely funny scenes, for example when Paul accidentally drops his soul on the floor, and the manager crawls around nervously to search the carpet for it as if he were looking for, while afraid to step on, a contact lense.
The film also contains many suggestions as to the consequences of separating yourself from your soul. However, the film is inconsistent in these suggestions - do you have feelings or not, when you are without a soul? Do you have a conscience or not?
After having spent many scenes throughout the first half movie on Paul's rehearsals in the theater, director Sophie Barthes leaves this theme altogether for the second half.
Whereas the two above-mentioned movies keep the technicalities of their premise in the background, this movie spends many lines explaining how souls leave residue etc., without adding to the story.
I was entertained by this movie and it inspired a somewhat soul-searching conversation with my co-viewer. I found Giamatti's performance pleasant and was quite fascinated by Dina Korzun's quiet, almost cool humbleness as Nina. But when it came to the story's personal and existential development, I was left with too many blanks.