Rehearsing to play Uncle Vanya on a New York stage, Paul Giamatti feels that his emotional life is getting in the way of his performance. After consulting with the affable Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), he decides to try an experimental service called “Soul Storage,” which provides relief from man’s existential burden through the extraction (and cold storage) of the soul. Yet the side effects – he’s now bizarrely buoyant and blithely callous – send him back to “rent” the soul of a Russian poet, salvaging his Vanya but leading to disturbing visions. Plans to reclaim his soul are dashed when a mysterious, soul-trafficking Russian “mule” (Korzun) steals Giamatti's stored soul for an ambitious, but talentless, soap-opera actress (Winnick) in St. Petersburg. Suddenly thrust into the middle of a twisted black market of international soul trafficking, the actor journeys halfway around the world to reclaim what he’d so readily given away.An indelible story that approaches deep philosophical questions with a light, beguiling touch, writer-director Sophie Barthes’s wise and funny first feature evokes everything from Woody Allen’s SLEEPER to the novels of Nikolai Gogol. Featuring a hilarious and heartbreaking performance by the always-game Giamatti and memorable turns by an all-star cast, COLD SOULS is a poetic, entertaining, and confidently ambitious piece of filmmaking.
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