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Samuel Goldwyn Acquires Paul Giamatti's Cold Souls

by Alex Billington
January 31, 2009

In a post-Sundance purchase, the Samuel Goldwyn Company has acquired the US distribution rights to Cold Souls. The film is written and directed by Sophie Barthes and stars Paul Giamatti as himself. Not only am I glad to report this news because it means those of you looking forward to the film will eventually get to see it in theaters, but it gives me an opportunity to talk about it briefly since I didn't review it during the fest. Agree or not, the film draws a lot of comparisons to anything from Charlie Kaufman and especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but it's still a very unique and entertaining story of its own.

Our friend Eric Lavallee of IONCinema.com absolutely loved Cold Souls and expects it to be in his top 20 by the end of the year, which is a tremendous bit of praise. However, I had some problems with it, mainly with the Russian story elements that seem to stem from director Sophie Barthes' own nationality. Like any of Charlie Kaufman's work, Cold Souls instigates plenty of discussion regarding the soul and life in general, because in the film, Giamatti has his soul extracted, and at one pointed replaced with someone else's. For those who love that kind of subjective discussion, Cold Souls is definitely worth seeing.

As of this moment, we're not sure when Samuel Goldwyn will be releasing Cold Souls, but we expect it to be sometime around the end of the year. As soon as we know more, we'll be the first to let you know!

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Hector N

After John Adams I'll definitely watch anything from Mr Giamatti
Jmoney

Wasn't this an episode of the Simpsons? you know, Bart sells his soul to Milhouse for five bucks, then weird stuff starts happening and he wants it back, but can't get it
Matt

Fantastic. I was really excited for this film and I'm glad to see it picked up. Paul Giamatti is criminally underrated - I think he's one of the best American actors working today. "Simpsons did it! Simpsons did it!"
Tim "Cloverfield"

Mr. Giamatti can do no wrong......look at a real Actor Buttons!
Red Color Buttons.

I have known of him for a while. He is the reason I rented Shoot em up. And he did make it worth it. But i will always defend cage.
arthur

"...mainly with the Russian story elements that seem to stem from director Sophie Barthes' own nationality" Unclear to me what exactly about Sophie's French nationality negatively/positively affects her view of Russia and resultant story line. If you mean that she isn't Russian, well sure. But after my 12 years in Russia, Cold Souls is possibly the only film made outside of Russia the successfully shows the modern day reality, while brilliantly laughing at every cliche that has developed since the fall of the USSR, both those of Russians and Westerners. Russian women trafficking, not being trafficked. Who wants an American soul? The Russian 'poet' trapped in factory life. The real life of a foreigner in an empty Petersburg hotel. All spot on, all hilariously intelligent. If you mean that her view as a Frenchwoman is in some way lacking over her American/Brit/Mexican, et al colleagues, well.... i must assume you didn't mean that. Cause that's just silly. And when will the American film world wake up to social science fiction. That is, science fiction without special effects. It is not the realm of Kaufmann, he just happened to make a couple of great ones in the genre. Hopefully, we'll come around to this realization faster than we found out who phillip k. dick was... Congratulations to Ms. Barthes, Mr. Giamatti and Mr. Parekh on a wonderful film.