Cold souls

Andrij (Andrew) Parekh is one name to conjure with while watching Cold Souls. The movie's co-producer and cinematographer, he makes writer-director Sophie Barthes' debut feature look brilliantly, brightly melancholy. That sounds oxymoronic, which is apt for this surreal comedy-thriller.

Charlie Kaufman was clearly one of Barthes' key inspirations for her bizarre tale of a distraught actor (Paul Giamatti playing himself, a la Kaufman's Being John Malkovich). Challenged by despair while rehearsing Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, Paul resorts to a surgical procedure that extract and stores his troubled chickpea-sized soul temporarily.

Soul Storage's director (David Strathairn) has a cross-border deal with a Russian gangster's soul-trafficking outfit, which employs mules to transport transplanted souls in their heads. Bereft of his soul, Paul becomes a bad actor and borrows the soul of a female Russian poet. His character having also changed, to the discomfort of his wife (Emily Watson), Paul wants his original soul back. But the gangster's wife, who's a bad TV soap opera actress, has had Paul's soul secretly lent to her because she thinks it's that of Al Pacino.

When she won't return it, Paul travels to Moscow with the sympathetic mule. As to be expected, the story gets somewhat complex and silly from then on, with people popping in and out of the soul extractor and the Russian soul's donor committing suicide. All might be well that ends well, but it doesn't and the suddenness of the lovely closing scene of sunset on Brighton Beach is like a slap in the face. A bizarre and surprisingly refreshing slap, like the movie itself.