Wonks Anonymous just saw Cold Souls with Paul Giamatti which he loved far more than any of the reviewers he has read.

In the movie we have found a way to remove and re implant/transplant the soul. Enter actor Giamatti who is feeling the strain of close identification with Checkov's Uncle Vanya who he is playing on Broadway. To get more comfortable he has his soul extracted but this ruins both his life and his acting.

To get something back he has a "donated" Russian soul - they say it is a poet - transplanted into his body. The transplant does not sit well. There are dark dreams of Dickensian orphanages and flashes of naked despair. When he tries to get his soul back he discovers that it has been accidentally shipped to Russia. The rest of the movie is his quest to retrieve his own soul and return the transplant.

Wonks Anonymous loved the movie in part because he is a sucker for fantasy and surrealism, in part because Wonks Anonymous is dying to see Paul Gaimatti perform Uncle Vanya. It also seems that Wonks Anonymous felt a great deal more emotional impact from the second half of the film than most viewers.

You see, a this part of the movie takes place in Saint Petersburg where it seems that Russians are selling their souls in order to avoid the pain of their lives, perform better in the new post communist society and get a little extra money to get by on. This from Manohla Dargis at the NY Times

He also looks into his own soul, and while it brings tears to his eyes, it, much like the Russian subplot, proves disappointingly banal, which might be true to life but is an artistic letdown.

Because why? Because the scenes of people standing in line to give up their souls for a little comfort are dull and irritating? Because we cannot identify with the pain of a woman - who turns out to be Giamatti's transplant "donor" - pleading for the return of her soul? Because St Petersburg is all too low and too sordid?

Because we would rather see another exploration of the interior lives of upper middle class Americans in all of their seriousness and complexity? Please spare us the details of how the rest of the world ekes out its existence in want and longing.

And what, pray tell, is the distance between the Russians in the movie who sell their souls hoping to get a better life and the Russian women who are still traded like commodities in the international market for human flesh?