Directed by: Aaron Schimberg
Distributed by: A24
Written by Anna Harrison
75/100
Would you, given the choice, want to look like Sebastian Stan?
For many of us, including the protagonist of Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man,” the answer is obvious. Who wouldn’t want to be blessed with a better sequence of genes? Certainly Edward does, whose severe facial deformity has left him a loner with acting dreams slowly circling the drain. Played by Sebastian Stan under what must have been pounds of makeup from Mike Marino, Edward’s disability has hobbled him in every manner imaginable—socially, emotionally, professionally—and lives a life (if it can be called that) of pure avoidance.
This changes with the arrival of a new hot neighbor, aspiring playwright Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), who doesn’t shy away from Edward; in fact, she seems to find excuses to be near him. It’s a modern day Beauty and the Beast, until it isn’t: Edward, sick of strangers gawking at him in restaurants, decides to join a test trial for a drug that could remove the growths on his face. Miraculously, it works. Under all those growths, Edward looks very much like Sebastian Stan without prosthetics—in other words, conventionally attractive. Edward, in fits and bursts, learns to enjoy his newfound freedom. He shuffles awkwardly to a bar, but with each interaction his posture straightens, his smile widens, and he casts off the self-doubt that plagued him as his old self. He is no longer Edward. Now, he’s Guy, just like everyone else.
But was it really a miracle drug? To reveal his Guy persona, Edward had to endure nights of crippling pain and quite literally tear his skin off in several scenes that veer into acutely discomfiting body horror. When Guy returns to his old apartment, no one—including Ingrid—recognizes him. To cap it all off, Ingrid writes a play about her tragic neighbor, passing off Edward’s old words as her own. The play, in which a disfigured man and playwright fall in love, is what “A Different Man” could have been in less thoughtful hands: saccharine and overwrought, with Edward reduced to a caricature who turns “normal” through the power of love.
Guy scores the role over several disabled actors, prompting excuses from Ingrid about respect and appropriation, but things really kick off with the introduction of Oswald (Adam Pearson). Oswald, who looks remarkably like Edward (Pearson has neurofibromatosis), stumbles into the rehearsal room and injects a new life into “A Different Man.” From here on out, it becomes a two-hander between Stan and Pearson, leaving Reinsve largely forgotten. Guy has already been grappling with the dissonance between Edward of the play and the man he used to be, but the introduction of Oswald is what truly begins to chip away at his new persona. Edward was a loner and a loser, and hid himself away because of his disability; Oswald, by contrast, is charming and outgoing, with a rich inner life and even a kid from a previous marriage. Was Edward, then, merely hampered by his own self-loathing? Ingrid grows closer and closer to Oswald—could Edward have done the same? Is Guy the same bumbling, awkward man he used to be, only with a shiny new exterior?
It leads us back to our earlier question: would you, given the choice, want to look like Sebastian Stan? Edward ripped off his skin to do so, but we get the sense that Oswald would decline, and that drives Guy mad. Stan does his best work yet opposite Pearson as he slowly unravels, funny and demented in turns, and Pearson’s cheeky charm and openness as Oswald provide the perfect foil, but it’s Schimberg’s confident direction and script that keep “A Different Man” lively. I imagine it would be a good double feature with “The Substance,” another horrifically funny movie about the desire to be young and hot, though one cannot imagine Oswald’s self-confidence existing in the mean-spirited world of Coralie Fargeat’s film. Only the third act brings down “A Different Man” as Schimberg allows his careful guidance to slide into an overlong ending that fails to show anything that the first two-thirds of the film did not, yet that cruel, perfect final line—one last cosmic joke for Edward—is worth it.
“A Different Man” Trailer
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