Written and Directed by Aaron Schimberg | 112 min | ▲▲△△△ | Crave
This is bit of a confounding picture, a satire based on a foundation of interesting ideas and happy to play with them, but the commitment to the bit sends it off the rails in the last act. A Different Man wants to examine the way society judges us on the way we look, and how we internalize those lessons about ourselves — in that it would make a terrific double-feature with the evident self-loathing in The Substance.
Sebastian Stan is unrecognizable as Edward, a New York man with visibly different facial features due to neurofibromatosis type 1, a genetic disease that manifests in growing benign tumours, in this case on his face and head. He’s a struggling actor, lonely and awkward around people, especially the aspiring playwright living next door, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person In The World). Meanwhile, Edward is subject to an experimental process that physically changes him, eventually revealing Stan’s handsome mug.
The points of reference here are any number of fairy tales about inner beauty, from The Ugly Duckling to Beauty And The Beast, but I couldn’t help but think of the Walter Hill noir, Johnny Handsome, where Mickey Rourke plays a convicted criminal with facial deformities who gets a new face and a second chance. Thematically the two films actually have a similar intent, though otherwise couldn’t be more different.
Edward invents a whole new persona, a new life and career, to go with his new face. He’s now a real estate agent, living in a fancy new apartment and seeing multiple women. But when he sees Ingrid has a new off-off-Broadway play based on his former life, he puts on a mask that mimics his former looks and auditions, managing to score the lead role.
Is that because he still loves Ingrid, or because he just feels determined that this is his story to tell? Are we to assume the new life he’s chosen isn’t fulfilling enough? This is where the film’s plausibility start to lose traction, the satiric mission on the forefront not supporting much in the way of character motivation, this despite the solid performances and thoughtful concept.
Out of nowhere comes Oswald, played by Adam Pearson, who looks a lot like Edward did. Pearson actually does live with neurofibromatosis type 1, and is an actor — he had a supporting role in Under The Skin — and an advocate in the UK for people with visible differences. Oswald is an outgoing, charismatic fellow, well-liked by everyone who meets him, and is entirely confounding to Edward. Oswald convinces Ingrid that he is the right person to play Edward in her play. Losing the role sends the actual Edward into a spiral of insane behaviour.
And, sure, that sounds like the film is being true to a few of the fables its referencing, but it also ceases to have any relationship to recognizable reality. Edward gets more and more unhinged, and even after he’s been murderously violent somehow Ingrid and Oswald still have time in their lives for him. Of course, it never occurred to Edward to try and convince Ingrid that he was still the same person she knew before, to be honest about his changes. Instead, he has to fulfill that monstrous role, that inability to reconcile who he is now with who he was. There’s no sense of freewill here, he’s just a pawn of the plot.
All of this is supposed to be drily funny, but it isn’t, it’s ridiculous if not depressing. At the film’s start it’s very much taking a Yorgos Lanthimos road toward its thematic concerns, but it never quite finds the right balance in absurdity. Too bad, because examining the our self-perceptions through this lens has a lot of promise. For about half the running time it works.
