Being Paul Giamatti

It’s a strange week: When was the last time two films in which actors play themselves opened on the same day? In "Paper Heart," Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera act out a staged, fictionalized re-creation of their real-life romance. In "Cold Souls," Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti -- presumably, one hopes -- an even more fictionalized re-creation.

In writer-director Sophie Barthes’ debut feature, Giamatti is rehearsing a stage production of "Uncle Vanya." Feeling that he's losing control, he visits a clinic that specializes in removing people's souls and stashing them in refrigerated safe-deposit boxes. "You'll feel relieved of a great weight," rhapsodizes goofy quack Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), wheeling him into an extraction chamber that looks like an MRI scanner crossed with an industrial washing machine.

At first, Giamatti feels terrific. But such a great weight has been lifted that his portrayal of Vanya is now too light. When he goes back to Flintstein to have the process reversed, he discovers that his soul has been stolen by Nina (Dina Korzun), a Russian "mule" who has had her own extracted to make room for the souls she smuggles into the U.S.

She’s fulfilling a rare special order: As one of the Russians says, "Who wants to buy an American soul?" (Why there would be a healthy American market for Russian souls is never explained.) A frantic Giamatti searches for her, in hopes of buying back his soul and returning the "loaner" soul Flintstein has given him to its original owner.

Had "Cold Souls" come out exactly a decade earlier, it would have seemed utterly original and daring ... because it would have beaten "Being John Malkovich" to the screen by a few months.