I Know CoMo » Blog Archive » Cold Souls – “a soul-searching comedy”

Posted on 19 October, 2009 | No Comments

by Gwen Ragno

Earlier this weekend, the film $9.99 offered us the meaning of life by mail order. Now Cold Souls, written and directed by Sophie Barthes, offers soul extraction and storage. And trafficking, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Paul Giamatti, starring as himself, is struggling with a theatrical performance when he hears about a company that can temporarily extract your soul, or even trade it out for another if you like. He tries the soulless thing for a while, but when that doesn’t work out for him he rents the soul of a Russian poet. Eventually he decides that he wants his own soul back, only to find that it’s been stolen by a soul-trafficking ring. The rest of the movie is him trying to get it back.

The film is hilarious in a dark sort of way, and very metaphysical if you’re into that. It reminded me a lot of something that Charlie Kauffman would write (ever seen Being John Malkovich?). I saw Beth Mickle, the production designer for the film, speak at a panel on Friday and she said that the way it was originally written, Cold Souls had the potential to be a very commercial, mainstream sort of film. But it was directed and produced with a more European sensibility, so it came out with a more indie, “art house” feel. I couldn’t tell whether Mickle thought this was a good thing or a bad thing, but personally I enjoyed it – beautifully shot, and both playful and soul-searching. Still, like Paul Giamatti, I may never be able to look at a chickpea the same again.

You can still catch Cold Souls at Ragtag until the end of the week, so check out the show times there.

Also, check out the rest of our Citizen Jane coverage!