
“Don’t judge a book by its cover” applies a lot more to people than it does to books.
A paperback bearing the image of a studly pirate pawing at the bodice of a buxom maiden, its title in elaborate, raised cursive script, is unlikely to contain spare prose probing the human condition—or even historically accurate piracy. But people are different.
Rationally, it’s the most obvious thing in the world that someone’s appearance has virtually nothing to do with the quality of the character. (To be clear, the types of baseball caps or tee shirts someone chooses to wear can tell you a lot.) But it remains a truism that people possessing conventionally attractive physical features are perceived more positively.
Aspiring actor Edward, the central character in A Different Man, knows this. He’s committed to his craft, but his appearance has relegated him to a single paying job in a workplace training video intended to teach employees to be sensitive toward co-workers with facial differences. Edward has a condition, neurofibromatosis, that has caused his own face to be covered in an array of benign tumors. In addition to hampering his employment prospects, his appearance has made Edward hesitant about romance. So when his new neighbor Ingrid (Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World) turns out to be a pretty, pleasant playwright, it’s a contributing factor to his decision to investigate an experimental treatment that promises to cure his genetic anomaly.
It works, and beneath that misbehaving flesh, or rather an impressively convincing amalgam of prosthetics, lies the firm-jawed visage of Sebastian Stan, who gives the best performance of his career and the second-best performance in this film. Because that’s only the setup for director Aaron Schimberg’s intriguing, darkly funny psychodrama. Believing the Edward she knew has died, Ingrid writes a play about him, and Edward becomes obsessed with playing the character.
During rehearsals for the Off-Broadway production of Ingrid’s play, an affable Brit named Oswald (Adam Pearson) shows up. Oswald has neurofibromatosis (as does Pearson), and having heard about the play, subtly insinuates himself into the process and by extension into Edward’s life. Despite the superficial resemblance between Oswald and the old Edward, they couldn’t be more different. Oswald is gregarious, upbeat, utterly comfortable in his skin. Edward, even after having his edges smoothed out, is a nebbish, desperate for the approval of others and resentful when he doesn’t get it. Oswald, in other words, wouldn’t think of undergoing the procedure Edward sought out, and Edward, having done so, is now realizing that his face wasn’t his problem.
Stan’s work here is miles from his portraits of macho cartoons like Marvel’s Winter Soldier or Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee. Even once he’s freed from all that makeup, his rolled shoulders and leaden gaze mark him as someone deeply disconnected from himself. In addition to providing much-needed energy to the film’s second half, Pearson clearly relishes playing someone clearly modeled on his own persona as a well-known (at least in the U.K.) TV reader and documentary host who refuses to be defined solely by his disability.
Pearson also appeared opposite Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin and starred in Schimberg’s previous feature, a delicious, similarly twisted fable about performance, appearance, and representation that’s inspired by, and takes its title from, the 1952 exploitation picture Chained for Life. (It, and Schimberg’s even more bizarre first feature, Go Down Death, are available to watch for free via Kanopy.)
In addition to its self-contained pleasures, A Different Man benefits from the frisson generated by its release on the heels of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. What are the odds that two films featuring protagonists who pursue speculative medical treatments for their perceived physical abnormalities would show up within two weeks of each other? Well, in an industry that caters to a society that’s obsessed with superficial perfection, it shouldn’t be all that shocking. (The recent Netflix movie The Uglies covers similar terrain.)
The contrasts between the two, however, are illuminating. Demi Moore’s character in The Substance is worried that the appeal she once held is being sapped by age, whereas Edward in A Different Man is attempting to escape the learned helplessness he’s developed in response to a congenital trait. She’s happy, at least initially, to let her rejuvenated doppelgänger take her place as the object of others’ gaze, while he becomes desperate not to be upstaged by his former, flawed self. While both end up regretting their decisions, one is a horror film and the other a psychodrama. They’d make a fascinating double feature. (A Different Man opens on Friday, Oct. 4 at Regal Fox Tower, Salem Cinema, Eastport Plaza, and Bridgeport Village.)
FALL FESTIVAL FECUNDITY
October has clearly become the trendy month in which to hold a film festival in Oregon. To wit:
The Ashland International Film Festival opens its first full-fledged in-person event in five years on Thursday, Oct. 3. Following pandemic shutdowns, institutional turnover, and a crowdfunding campaign, AIFF, with former Executive Director Richard Herskowitz returning as Director of Programming, will once again take over the Varsity Theatre for four days. The features are dominated by documentaries (18) over narratives (8), with the former including the highly anticipated reproductive rights doc Zurawski v. Texas and the latter including the locally shot Above the Trees. Special guests include Oscar-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and Oregon animator Joanna Priestley. Your correspondent will be in attendance, so look for a report in this space next week. (October 3-6)
Next weekend, the 21st Annual Bend Film Festival turns that beautiful city into a cinematic oasis. Expected highlights include new films from directors Andrea Arnold (American Honey) and Sean Baker (The Florida Project), as well as a strong lineup of indigenous and environmental-themed programming. The festival will honor filmmaker Karyn Kusama with screenings of her gritty dramas Destroyer (starring Nicole Kidman) and Girlfight. (October 10-13)
Then, the weekend after that, La Grande hosts the Eastern Oregon Film Festival. This scrappy celebration of the seventh art boasts an eclectic lineup of shorts programs, as well as the latest documentary from Maureen Gosling (Who Is Barbara Dane?) and the homecoming premiere of Breakup Season, a feature that was shot locally with the support of the festival and the surrounding community. If the past is any guide, EOFF is as much about community as it as a showcase for new work, and a unique experience. (Oct. 17-19)
Meanwhile, in Portland, the venerable and always intriguing H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival (the 29th!) runs from Oct. 4-6 at the Hollywood Theatre. In what I think is a change from previous years, ticketing is on a day-by-day rather than film-by-film basis. But if you aren’t stoked by the idea of investing in one pass that gives you access to 10 hours (4 on Friday) of eldritch horrors, faceless creatures from beyond time, and repeated references to Dunwich, Arkham, and Shub-Niggurath, then you are clearly not the target audience here. There are also panel discussions and readings in the lobby. It should be a blast, and if I wasn’t in Ashland… (Oct. 4-6, Hollywood Theatre)
And, if that wasn’t enough, the Portland Latin American Film Festival continues with a screening of Reinas, a deceptively straightforward story set in early 1990s Peru, during a time of economic crisis and ubiquitous violence from the conflict between the government and the Shining Path rebels. A deadbeat dad, benign but inept, who compulsively lies, tries to reconnect with his two daughters during the weeks remaining before their upper-class mother plans to emigrate with them to Minnesota. Thanks to empathetic performances all around, co-writer/director Klaudia Reynicke-Candeloro’s third feature conjures complex characters and emotion that’s grounded in the political and social reality on the ground in Lima. Gonzalo Molina takes a bedraggled stereotype and gives him humanity, while the girls—one teenaged and rebellious, the other younger and naive—aren’t treated as mere victims in the tug of war between their parents. (Wednesday, Oct. 9, Hollywood Theatre)
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