A Different Man

Aaron Schimberg follows up his 2019 film Chained for Life, about an attractive movie actress struggling to connect with her facially disfigured co-star, with this story of a facially disfigured wannabe actor who undergoes an experimental treatment that miraculously transforms him into a handsome man. But while his new face enables him to become a successful real estate bro who can make money, get laid, and be one of the gang, he loses out on a plumb acting role based on his former self. It's a clever spin on the Jeckle and Hyde story that interrogates the shallow ways we humans judge others (and ourselves) told in a shallow, didactic, and self-conscious manner.

Sebastian Stan (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I Tonya, The Apprentice) plays Edward Lemuel, a shy, struggling actor with neurofibromatosis. Edward befriends his new neighbor, Ingrid (The Worst Person in the World's Renate Reinsve), an aspiring playwright, but is too nervous to act on his attraction to her. When he undergoes an experimental medical treatment that almost instantly cures him of his condition, he decides to create a new identity for himself, "Guy Moratz," and pretend that Edward has killed himself. This narrative turn feels so illogical and so out of tone with the film we've been watching up to this point that it severed all the connection I had developed to Edward over the first act. The movie is more or less staged in realistic terms without the heightened or stylized milieu that would make such a choice feel credible. If Edward had been offered a bag of magic beans or had a buddy who was a mad scientist, his decision to forgo any medical follow-up and assume that the results of this treatment would be permanent and have no side effects (as is indeed the case) might make sense and enable Schimberg to tell this story as a fable. But nothing about the film up to the point of the magical transformation aligns with this crucial narrative turn.

From then on, we're asked to accept a barrage of random and illogical occurrences that lead to tediously predictable outcomes. The biggest of these is the introduction of Oswald, played by the terrific Chained for Life star Adam Pearson (an actor who actually has neurofibromatosis). Oswald is the polar opposite of Edward despite having the same disfigurement. He's charming, happy-go-lucky, and loved by practically everyone he interacts with. In Oswald, "Guy" sees the kind of person he could have been in his previous incarnation, and this starts to drive him crazy.

Schimberg clearly knew what low-budget filmmaking was like when he made Chained for Life, but even in the most slip-shod off-off-off-Broadway production, it's hard to imagine a scene like Oswald's introduction occurring. Watching it, I could not help but imagine dozens of credible ways to inject this guy into this story. But everything in A Different Man feels expedited, as if the film is trying to make its points as quickly and obviously as it can without bothering to contain them within either a realistic narrative or a heightened, stylistic piece of genre fiction. It's like the movie is meant to be a dark satire, but Schimberg forgot to add laughs (except for one clever scene involving the possible adaption of Ingrid's play into a movie).

This is one of those films that ostensibly explores the issue of self-hatred, where every character ends up being an asshole, so I'm not sure why I should care. I guess we're meant to come away with the understanding that unless one is at peace with who they are, they can't be a decent person in the world? I don't know. Still, even though the characters in this movie feel one-dimensional, the performances are great, which made me wish all the more that I was watching a character study rather than whatever kind of didactic burlesque this is meant to be.