The listing for Cold Souls fascinated me when I first flipped through Sundance Film Guide. It described a science fiction film in which souls can be extracted from the body and purchased and sold on a black market. Knowing only this, I had to assume the film would take a metaphysical approach and examine the duality between the body and the soul.

The film starts of with a quote from Descartes in which he describes that the pineal gland in the brain is the physical location of the soul. I assumed this quote would be used to ease us into this exploration of dualism; unfortunately it seemed only to function as a plot device by letting people know the idea behind the soul residing in a physical part of the brain was not new. It also let us know where we need to stretch our creative imagination in order to enjoy this science fiction comedy.

Unfortunately I was not prepared for a comedy and that no doubt affected my appreciation for the film. That being said, the film has extremely funny moments and because Paul Giamatti plays himself in the film we are treated to plenty of self-deprecating humor. From Giamatti’s agent being the one to recommend the company that offers to store his soul, to finding out that the physical manifestation of his soul is a mere chickpea, Giamatti’s comedic touches are spot on.

Given the absurdist material, Sophie Barthes had to work with (there is literally a black market in which souls are trafficked back and forth between the US and Russia) it would have been easy for the comedy to get out of hand. For the most part however, she shows restraint and the script remains witty from start to finish.

Unfortunately this comedy was not enough to save the film. In a somewhat ironic twist, it seems Cold Souls has no soul of its own, and comes across as somewhat lifeless when that is clearly not the intention. The reason seems to lie in how the subject matter is treated in the film. In today’s time we face grim predictions of the future as we scramble to pick up the fractured pieces of our recent past. Given this rough spiritual environment, the very notion that someone would want to give up his or her soul simply because it’s become a burden seems to be a disturbing concept which needed to be treated with greater reverence than it received.

There is a lot to be said for the film and it is well worth seeing. It’s a very ambitious directorial debut for Sophie Barthes and hopefully this will only serve as an introduction to an artist who will continue to produce interesting works.

Tags: Cold Souls, Jason Voss, Paul Giamatti, Science Fiction, Sophie Barthes

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 2:00 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.