Sophie Bartes’ The Pod Generation

Don't call them test tube babies. They come from pods, at least they do if their parents have sufficient resources for stress-free pregnancies. There are still people who prefer to do things the old-fashioned way, but Rachel Novy does not think she is one of them. Yet, her pod-pregnancy starts to change her perspective in screenwriter-director Sophie Bartes’ The Pod Generation, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Rachel Novy is an online marketing consultant, while her husband Alvy is a botanist. That definitely means she is the one who makes all their money. Seriously, in this near-ish future, botany is almost a lost science, since most plants are synthetic or computer generated. As you might suspect, he is also the one who is skeptical of the pod process, but she signs up anyway.

At first, he is a bit out of sorts she made this decision without him, but he accepts and steadily warms to the idea. In fact, he is the one who bonds with the incubation pod they carry home. Ironically, she starts experiencing the sort of fevered dreams associated with traditional pregnancy. Much to her surprise, she also develops a new-found appreciation for the genuine and the natural.

Talky films can interesting. Fortunately, Pod Generation is one of them. Admittedly, the arc of Barthes’ narrative is a bit flat, but she raises some heavy issues regarding science, nature, and authenticity. Her ostensive subject is motherhood, which is a big theme in itself, but a lot of the points the film raises could apply to topics.

It is also worth noting getting the right look for Pod Generation was almost as important to its success as it was for the Barbie movie, but it had a tiny fraction of that monstrosity’s budget. Production designer Clement Price-Thomas and art director Stephan Rubens convincingly create an ambiguously near-future world that feels slick and affluent, but also somewhat cold and impersonal.

Giamatti as Giamatti: Cold Souls

It is all too easy to believe thousands of New Yorkers are walking around without souls. While some professions might regard the soul as an impediment to success (trial lawyers come to mind), for an actor like Paul Giamatti it is indispensable for evoking the emotions of their trade. So when the actor’s soul is misplaced, it jeopardizes his career and his marriage in Cold Souls (trailer here), Sophie Barthes’s post-modern fantasy opening this Friday in New York and Los
Angeles.

In the tradition of Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, Paul Giamatti plays Paul Giamatti playing Uncle Vanya. Unfortunately, the tragic Chekhov protagonist is taking a debilitating emotional toll on the Academy Award winning actor. His agent suggests a dubious solution. The Soul Storage Company, a new tech start-up, can physically remove the soul and keep it in cold storage, liberating customers from all their anxiety.

Initially, the de-souling alleviates Giamatti’s depression, but it obviously leaves him soulless, in effect dead inside. Suddenly, he is no fun to live with and not much of an actor either. Yet when he returns to reclaim his soul, his safety deposit box is empty. It turns out soul trafficking is a burgeoning criminal enterprise. Now, after trying to avoid the Russian angst of Vanya, Giamatti finds himself in St. Petersburg, on the trail of the smugglers who stole his soul.

Clearly inspired by Charlie Kaufman’s Malkovich script and maybe a bit of Sleeper-era Woody Allen, Barthes’s premise is undeniably clever, but her pacing sometimes lags. Still, co-producer-cinematographer Andrij Parekh fashions a distinctive visual style for Cold, capitalizing on the stark, frozen Russian locations and sterile retro-ultra-modern sets.

One would certainly expect Giamatti to be convincing playing a fanciful version of himself, but his shrewdly understated performance is surprisingly memorable. He effectively anchors the film, giving soul, if you will, to Barthes’s frosty tale. Among the supporting cast, David Strathairn brings a nice comedic flair to the soul-extracting Dr. Flintstein. However, Emily Watson seems trapped in the underwritten role of Giamatti’s wife Claire and the several soulless characters are by necessity cold and unsympathetic.

If nothing else, the idea of Giamatti playing Vanya sounds like a hot ticket Broadway producers should explore. His intriguing screen work brings a redemptive humanity to Barthes’s coolly stylized vision. It opens this Friday (8/7) at the Sunshine and Lincoln Plaza Theaters.