Cold Souls

In response to shiny, bigger, better American consumerism comes the movie “Cold Souls,” a surreal comedy in which souls can be extracted and traded as commodities. Balancing on a tightrope between deadpan humor and pathos, and reality and fantasy, the film presents Paul Giamatti as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of Uncle Vanya. Paralyzed by anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. Giamatti enlists their services — only to find out that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea. On top of this discovery, complications arise when he becomes the unfortunate victim of “soul-trafficking” which leads him to Russia in hopes of retrieving his stolen soul from an ambitious but talentless soap-opera actress.