Cold Souls

Cold Souls sees comic actor Paul Giamatti playing, curiously, a New York actor named Paul Giamatti who's getting into character for Chekhov's Uncle Vanya but unable to leave his personal baggage at the door. How inviting then when his agent gives him the lead on a new venture: soul storage. In a simple op, Paul can offload his soul into a glass canister and pick it up again later, once he has fulfilled his acting obligations. This is a comedy brought to the screen by writer-director Sophie Barthes, where smooth soul transition isn’t going to be easy. The ability to lose one’s soul for even a short time is an intriguing premise but unfortunately the film fails to truly turn this concept into the mother of all inventions, and whilst occasionally funny there's the sense that it doesn’t quite make full use of Paul Giamatti’s comic abilities either. [Matthew Arnoldi]