If a movie's objective is to be clever, that cleverness has to be original. The acting here is great. The cinematography and direction are also expert. But it's really a soulless film. Soulless is the respect that bad acting is soulless -- it's hackneyed and refurbished.
Being John Malkovich was a dagger in our eyes, and Charlie spawned an entirely new style of writing with it. Cold Souls is pretty much a carbon copy. Both films center on actors playing themselves caught in a sort of alternate reality that's only marginally different from real reality. The difference is some tapping into a supernatural level which is exploited, clumsily, for money. Even Strathairn and Orson Bean mirror each other as quirky proprietors. There's a quest to change who you are, become literally someone else, and then at the end to return to your original self.
It's a shame because there's a lot of good material to be mined here, but so little of it is. Barthes had a chance to go in a new direction, because the seed is good, but she lacked the spark that Kaufman has, which is what makes him such a genius.
Being John Malkovich was a dagger in our eyes, and Charlie spawned an entirely new style of writing with it. Cold Souls is pretty much a carbon copy. Both films center on actors playing themselves caught in a sort of alternate reality that's only marginally different from real reality. The difference is some tapping into a supernatural level which is exploited, clumsily, for money. Even Strathairn and Orson Bean mirror each other as quirky proprietors. There's a quest to change who you are, become literally someone else, and then at the end to return to your original self.
It's a shame because there's a lot of good material to be mined here, but so little of it is. Barthes had a chance to go in a new direction, because the seed is good, but she lacked the spark that Kaufman has, which is what makes him such a genius.