Release Date (UK) –13 November 2009
Certificate (UK) – 12A
Country – USA
Director – Sophie Barthes
Runtime – 101 mins
Starring – Paul Giamatti

Cold Souls, out in cinemas today, is a weird comedy starring Paul Giamatti as himself, and depicts him as an actor struggling with how to play his character in a production of the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya. After seeing an advert he decides that it might help his performance to put his soul in storage, a bizarre service offered by a mysterious company who have elaborate machines to extract peoples souls. Paul tries out being completely soulless for a while, and then even tries out other peoples souls in this surreal and black comedy. However the agency also deals in trafficked souls from Russia and Russian soul transporter Nina is forced to get an actors soul for her bosses aspiring actress wife and Paul’s soul is stolen from storage.

The film is blatantly trying to copy ideas from the films of Charlie Kaufman – if your fan of his work you may enjoy the bizarre comedy and surreal plot here but unfortunately its much weaker than Kauffman’s films like New York Synecodche or Being John Malkovich. However post-modern the characters and themes are in Cold Souls there’s just not as much comedy and the characters are pretty bland and annoying. The only real chemistry and comedy is found in the relationship between Paul and Nina in the later scenes when he travels to Russia to try and recover his soul, but their relationship doesn’t go anywhere and its quite a dissatisfying film overall.

Its interesting that Paul is struggling with a Russian play and its Russia that his soul is stolen to – perhaps the Russian characters are meant to represent characters in Uncle Vanya or another Chekhov play, but its not made clear if this is so. If you enjoyed Kaufman’s films then I’d give this a shot, but probably worth waiting for the DVD rather than forking out for a cinema trip.