No Ordinary Fool

The theatrical manner in which magicians perform their tricks has a twofold benefit. Firstly, it entertains the audience and entices them into a world where cynicism can be suspended for a time. Secondly, it keeps them distracted long enough for the magician to engage in the necessary sleight-of-hand for the trick to work. In Cold Souls, writer-director Sophie Barthes looks to employ a similar technique. Here, she draws the audience into a world where a company that claims to be able to extract a customer’s soul, store it, and replace it any time provokes only mild incredulity in its potential clients. On the other hand, when the cape is finally pulled away from around the bird cage, the latter frustratingly remains empty.

Put another way, there is no time given over here to providing insights into what the soul may be or even if we have one at all. The company’s managing director, Dr. Flintstein (played with deadpan lunacy by David Strathairn), would have us believe that this is because we still know so very little about it. All that he can offer is the ability to remove its heaviness from us. Hence, when an actor (Paul Giamatti playing a neurotic version of himself) turns up in search of a lightening of his spiritual burden, Dr. Flintstein gives his bottle of snake oil a good shake, easily fobs off any attempts by Giamatti to ask probing questions, and soon has his client agreeing to the procedure.

Acting like any good placebo should, Giamatti immediately proclaims that he does feel better. Conveniently kept animated then by “the residue of his soul that could not be extracted”, he ventures forth to embarrass his wife (Emily Watson) socially and to turn his titular role in Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya (a play about failed lives and heavy hearts, don’t you know) into upbeat lechery. To this point, the glacially-paced film is just about holding it together, thanks, in part, to an intriguingly moody subplot involving a mysterious blonde (Dina Korzun). However, with Giamatti’s character now rapidly dissolving into a mass of inconsistencies, the narrative soon finds itself on a slippery slope down to a disappointingly Walt Disney-type denouement.

Undeniably, the  morose, enigmatic, and subdued feel to this sterile and beautifully shot work is impressive. However, in trying simultaneously to be an eccentric comedy, a philosophical treatise, and a frozen mood piece, Cold Souls sadly ends up amounting to less than the sum of its parts. Yes, we may fill our lives with clutter, we may have forgotten how to look inside of ourselves, and we may always be attracted to dubious “quick fix” solutions to life’s complex problems. However, despite its inventiveness, creation of mood, and thought-provoking subject matter, a better film does seem to have been missed out on here. A pity really.