Review: A Different Man

Director:  Aaron Schimberg

Stars:  Adam Pearson, Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve

Aaron Schimberg seems to be a man with some interest in assumptions of beauty. His last feature – 2018’s Chained for Life – concerned a young, pretty actress coming to terms with her disfigured co-star’s physiognomy on the set of a farcical European art-house picture. Schimberg worked with actor Adam Pearson on that film. Pearson is someone many cineastes will know from his key supporting performance in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, and is remarkable for his neurofibromatosis which manifests as a deforming of the dermis; for Pearson around his facial features.

Also known in the UK for his TV presenting and campaigning against hate crimes upon the physically disfigured, Pearson proved an understandable inspiration for Schimberg, who has seemingly built his latest feature around the man and his affliction in an effort to crowbar open our thoughts and feelings on inner vs. outer beauty. Channelling the spirit of Charlie Kaufman to a degree, Schimberg presents what could be reductively seen as a masculine reflection of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance – a Jekyll and Hyde variant that’s far knottier with its delineations.

It’s a while before Pearson enters the picture. Instead we spend our time with Sebastian Stan’s Edward, an insular aspiring actor who suffers from the same deforming condition. Michael Marino works intricate wonders with his special make-up to disguise Stan for the majority of the movie’s first hour while Schimberg sketches out the shambling modesty of a man yearning for the spotlight while trying desperately to go unnoticed.

Fate conspires against Edward, however. He comes home one day to find a beautiful off-Broadway playwright named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) moving into the apartment next door. When his own front door is gouged by the movers, Ingrid fixes and paints it, slapping him with a bright red replacement that becomes both a shining icon of unspoken passion and a glaring visual metaphor for Edward’s otherness among the uniform.

Yearning for the acceptance he can’t see that Ingrid is ready to provide, Edward secretly agrees to undergo trials for a new drug designed to alleviate his symptoms. When it does so in a disgustingly gloopy fashion, Edward is transformed and Stan is ‘unmasked’ for his more conventionally handsome appearance. But this immediately brings about an apparent sea change in Edward’s personality, and a succession of lies and cover-ups provoke us to question where his true ‘monstrosity’ begins and ends. Making a literal new man of himself under the comically bland pseudonym Guy and now unrecognisable, he is surprised to discover Ingrid is mounting an ambitious play about his former self and struggling to cast her perfect leading man. You can guess where this is headed…

Shot through with a smart but understated sense of humour that already encourages our good graces, A Different Man is buoyed – and muddied – by the arrival of Oswald (Pearson), a gregarious Brit living in New York who holds up an unflattering mirror to Edward/Guy’s desperate and vindictive personality. Effortlessly charming, ingratiating but self-aware, Oswald waltzes into the midst of the movie’s already engaging set-up and throws a wrench into the works. A Different Man enjoys doubling at every turn, using repeats and recurrences to layer in a sense of stark irony, while teeing up what feels like an evolving interrogation of its own motives.

Production and performance are evidently as important to Schimberg as questions of identity and perception. This is his second film in a row to study the minutiae of mounting a theatrical act of storytelling, and to revel in the messy meat and bones of such creation. As Ingrid, Oswald and Edward/Guy dissect Ingrid’s retelling of her brief encounters with Edward, so Schimberg autopsies the creative process, interrogating notions of exploitation, inspiration and plagiarism. A Different Man can’t help but become a metatextual feast; a picture thoroughly engaged in turning its own mask inside out.

Writers and filmmakers can lose themselves in such introspective indulgence. Even Kaufman has done so on occasion. Credit to Schimberg, then, that he never lets A Different Man disappear too far up its own rear end. It’s never too clever for it’s own good, always remembering the self-effacing sense of humour that enamoured us to it in the first place.

Key to its success – beyond Schimberg’s own growing confidence and prowess as a visual storyteller – are his trio of central performers, who are all glowing. Stan (an oft undervalued actor) is perhaps the best he’s ever been (A Different Man may single-handedly rehabilitate his image after the tawdry mire of Pam & Tommy), traversing an erratic range as Edward’s rage and frustration slip out from behind his restrained persona – a mask given literal form. Reinsve has arguably the most thankless role as the semi-talented ingenue, but she brings a wry knowingness to Ingrid’s sincere aspirations. And, of course, there is Pearson, stealing the show as the man who effortlessly steals the show.

There are occasional clumsy moments. Exposition tends to announce itself rather awkwardly from time to time, and the entire project requires the audience to play along on a number of conceits and contrivances. But Schimberg encourages us to participate for the sake of his nourishing thought experiments. While hardly in the same leagues as the anxiety-inducing likes of the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, Schimberg is also a dab-hand at conveying Edward/Guy’s ingrained nervousness, weaponising harsh cuts, clattering foley and sudden zooms to keep A Different Man alert and volatile.

Ultimately, we’re asked to question our own assumptions about who Edward was when we first met him and where the transformations began. Did we imprint the picture with our own biases for or against him because of what came in through the eye? Is Oswald any less manipulative? Is Schimberg? Culpability is a magic bullet here, fired long before the opening credits even started rolling, ricocheting from one scenario to the next, zigzagging a strange tension through the entire movie. There’s a sense of strain in the third act, as if Schimberg isn’t entirely convinced of how to exit his elaborate construct, but he makes it out okay.

And, not for nothing, A Different Man also hides within it a truly enjoyable cameo that further syncs it up with the tics and inclinations of Charlie Kaufman. In a movie at least partway about art imitating life, it’s fitting to steal from the best.