Synopsis
Paul is agonising over his interpretation of 'Uncle Vanya' and, paralysed by anxiety, stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. He enlists their services—only to discover that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea.
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Cast
- Paul GiamattiPaul
- Emily WatsonClaire
- Dina KorzunNina
- David StrathairnDr. Flintstein
- Katheryn WinnickSveta
- Lauren AmbroseStephanie
- Michael StuhlbargHedge Fund Consultant
- Michael TuckerTheatre Director
- Armand SchultzAstrov
- Ted KochINS Officer
Recommendations
- 100
Film Threat
I love love love love loved Cold Souls. That might be because I love love love Paul Giamatti. - 91
Entertainment Weekly
Darkly funny, twisty-cool existential tragicomedy, loaded with smart notions and filmed like a surrealist dream. - 80
The New Yorker
Cold Souls has its flaws, and it threatens to sag into a Paul-like morbidity, but Giamatti’s anxious mien and unspectacular shamblings have never been better deployed. - 75
Rolling Stone
You'll laugh till it hurts at Cold Souls. - 75
USA Today
The low-key satire would have benefited from more of a back story to Giamatti's character and a clearer sense of his relationship with his wife. But what we do get is compelling in the way of an indelible, dreamy short story. - 70
The Hollywood Reporter
Giamatti is aptly cast, playing his own persona with awkward anxiety and suitably skewed humor. - 70
Variety
An amusing slice of existential whimsy with an Eastern European bent, Cold Souls posits a world in which humans can have their souls extracted and implanted in each others’ bodies. - 70
Village Voice
It may be only in the film's last ambiguous, evocative image that Barthes and Parekh finally transcend the material and arrive at something beautiful and ineffable.
