Cold Souls
Encyclopedia
Cold Souls is a 2009 comedy-drama film
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...

 written and directed by Sophie Barthes. The film features Paul Giamatti
Paul Giamatti
Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...

, Dina Korzun
Dina Korzun
-Life and career:Korzun was born in Smolensk. She graduated from secondary school and Art school, studied ballet and modern dancing. After graduation from the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre School, she was asked to join the Chekhov Moscow Arts Theater Troupe, where she was a stage actress...

, Emily Watson
Emily Watson
Emily Watson is an English actress. She gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.- Early life :...

, and David Strathairn
David Strathairn
David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...

. Giamatti stars as a fictionalised version of himself, an anxious, overwhelmed actor who decides to enlist the service of a company to deep freeze his soul. Complications ensue when his soul gets lost in a soul trafficking scheme which has taken his soul to St. Petersburg. The film then follows Giamatti, as himself, desperately trying to recover his soul.

Plot

Paul Giamatti
Paul Giamatti
Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...

 is an actor who becomes so impassioned with the characters and roles that he plays that he has trouble disassociating himself from the character after the scene is done. As a result his mind and spirit are a tangled mass of emotions that he seems to have trouble separating from his own feelings. As he struggles to play Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....

 he reads an article in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

regarding "Soul Storage", which in fact is a procedural clinic that physically removes one's soul from their body.

While hesitant at first to go through with such a procedure, being unsure how it would affect the life around him, Paul decides to go ahead. On visiting the clinic he discovers that most souls come out as gray matter or clouds, he decides to go ahead, declining the offer to look at his soul as it happens. He is distressed to discover that his soul comes out looking just like a chickpea
Chickpea
The chickpea is a legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae...

. He has it stored in the clinic and returns to his life with 5% of his soul remaining. However, his life begins to fall apart; he has trouble associating or making love to his wife Claire. Lacking in emotional intelligence, he says insensitive things, such as telling a friend to just "pull the plug" on her comatose mother, and his acting for the Chekhov play lacks believability. Not wanting his soul back just yet, he instead obtains the soul of, what he is told, is a Russian poet, whose memories entice him to be curious about her and her life as well as obtain a curiosity of his own. This Russian soul allows him to play Uncle Vanya excellently, but the experience overwhelms him and he decides to get his own soul back.

Paul's world is turned upside down when Nina, a Russian soul mule
Mule (smuggling)
A mule or courier is someone who smuggles something with him or her across a national border, including bringing in to and out of an international plane, especially a small amount, transported for a smuggling organization. The organizers employ mules to reduce the risk of getting caught...

 who transports people's souls to and from Russia, steals Paul's soul for the wife of her boss at the Russian soul-storage operation, who aspires to be an actress. She receives Paul's soul, though, believing it to be the soul of Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...

. Her acting and happiness improve. Nina, the mule who carried Paul's soul and has become curious about him, eventually reveals the whereabouts of his soul, helping him to get it back. As the pair investigate the soul of Olga the poet, which he had 'rented' during this period, they learn that she committed suicide after not being able to get it back after selling it. Paul and Nina get his soul back, and after looking into it through the use of special goggles to reassociate himself to it, he returns to New York a happier man. Nina's soul is found, but Paul is told that it is unrecoverable due to the residues of souls that she has carried.

Cast

  • Paul Giamatti
    Paul Giamatti
    Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...

     as Paul
  • Dina Korzun
    Dina Korzun
    -Life and career:Korzun was born in Smolensk. She graduated from secondary school and Art school, studied ballet and modern dancing. After graduation from the prestigious Moscow Art Theatre School, she was asked to join the Chekhov Moscow Arts Theater Troupe, where she was a stage actress...

     as Nina
  • Emily Watson
    Emily Watson
    Emily Watson is an English actress. She gave an acclaimed debut film performance in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves.- Early life :...

     as Claire
  • David Strathairn
    David Strathairn
    David Russell Strathairn is an American actor. He was nominated for an Academy Award for portraying journalist Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck...

     as Dr. Flintstein
  • Katheryn Winnick
    Katheryn Winnick
    Katheryn Winnick is a Canadian film and television actress.-Life and career:Etobicoke-born Winnick, who is of Ukrainian descent and speaks fluent Ukrainian, has appeared in numerous studio films including Paramount's Failure to Launch and New Line's Amusement.She has guest starred in multiple...

     as Sveta
  • Lauren Ambrose as Stephanie
  • Boris Kievsky as Oleg
  • Oksana Lada
    Oksana Lada
    Oksana Lada is a Ukraine born actress, probably best known for the role of Irina Peltsin, the mistress of Tony Soprano on the hit HBO TV show The Sopranos. She also had a role as a wedding dress saleswoman in 30 Rock, Season 2, Episode 1, "Seinfeldvision."...

     as Sasha
  • Natalia Zvereva as Anastasia
  • Rebecca Brooksher as Yelena
  • Yevgeniy Dekhtyar as Hotel Receptionist
  • Floanne Ankah
    Floanne Ankah
    Floanne Ankah is an actress and filmmaker also known as a singer under the mononym Floanne. She was born and raised in France, and has lived in New York City since 2000...

     as Ballerina
  • Fabrizia Dal Farra as Ballerina
  • Polina Gorokhovskaya as Sophisticated Prostitute
  • Michael Stuhlbarg
    Michael Stuhlbarg
    Michael S. Stuhlbarg is an American theatre, film and television actor.-Life and career:Stuhlbarg was born in Long Beach, California and raised in Reform Judaism. He trained at Juilliard School and also studied acting at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, University of London and UCLA...

     as Hedge Fund Consultant

Production

Director Sophie Barthes has stated that she came up with the idea from the film when she had a dream in which she found herself one of several patients at a futuristic doctor's office. According to Barthes, the dream even included Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 and all the patients had a box that an office assistant explained was carrying their extracted souls. Once that was explained to the patients, they began to look in the boxes, but Barthes said she woke up before seeing her own soul. However, she did see the spiritual contents of Woody Allen's box and Barthes says that moment became the inspiration for the film and the Paul Giamatti character.

When Sophie approached Giamatti at the Nantucket Film Festival
Nantucket Film Festival
The Nantucket Film Festival is a film festival founded in 1996 to promote the cultural awareness and appreciation of the art of screenwriting in the world of cinema. Nantucket Film Festival screens a world-class program of independent, studio-produced, foreign, documentary, and short films in every...

 and pitched him on the film idea, he was ready to sign up on the spot.

The film was shot in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, United States and Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, Russia.

Reception

The film has received fairly positive reviews from critics. Based on 79 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, 76% of critics gave Cold Souls a positive review. Negative reviews focused on the film's similarity to Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman
Charles Stuart "Charlie" Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. His film work includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York...

's 1999 film Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich
Being John Malkovich is a 1999 American black comedy-fantasy film written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze. It stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and John Malkovich, who plays a fictional version of himself...

, as well as its similarity to Kaufman's topical themes and directorial style.
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