Paul Giamatti is missing that certain something

Directed by Sophie Barnes. Starring Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Emily Watson, Dina Korzun 12A cert, Cineworld/IFI Dublin 101min

IN THIS intriguing, if not wholly successful philosophical comedy, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named “Paul Giamatti”. Do you smell trouble?

The time when it seemed fresh for novelists to write versions of themselves or actors to play variations on their personae has long receded into the post- modern past. Indeed, one senses that Sophie Barthes, the film's writer and director, feels a little intimidated by the looming presence of Spike Jones's Being John Malkovich.

Cold Soul's central conceit could, however, as easily have come from Dostoevsky or Gogol as it could from Charlie Kaufman (a fact, perhaps, acknowledged by the film's eventual journey to St Petersburg). We begin with Giamatti suffering a professional breakdown while rehearsing for the title role in a Broadway production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya. Alarmed by the actor's stasis, Paul's agent points him towards a facility on Roosevelt Island that has soothed many citizens by extracting their troubled souls and storing them in a glass cylinder.

Paul warily agrees to the process and watches amazed as the staff removes something a little like a chickpea. Sure enough, he feels easier about himself, but rapidly discovers that, without anxiety as an anchor, his acting has gone to pot. Eventually, after experimenting unsuccessfully with the implantation of a third party’s soul, he demands to get his own back, but, through a complex series of manipulations, it is now in the body of a Russian soap-opera actress.

Phew! Reading a synopsis of the plot, you could be forgiven for thinking that Cold Soulsis a relentlessly busy film. In fact, despite its many absurd turns, it turns out to be a little too cool and a little too buttoned-up. Moreover, the vagueness of the central premise remains troubling throughout. Whereas the Dostoevsky of The Doublecould have expected a Christian audience to grasp the meaning of the soul, Barthes, playing to a potentially secular constituency, never quite clarifies if we are considering the conscience, the subconscious mind or something even more vital.

Still, the fact that one leaves the auditorium pondering such questions suggests that Cold Soulsis working its way into the brain. You won't get that from Couples Retreat.