Warning: This feature contains spoilers about the film.
By Bailey Pennick
Aaron Schimberg kept it brief in his introduction before A Different Man had its world premiere January 21 at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival: This is the one time I have to be able to show a film without anybody knowing anything about it. A hush fell over the Eccles audience as the writer-director said that. It's true. There's before you see A Different Man, and then there's after. The before is full of anticipation for the complex drama starring Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, and Renate Reinsve. The after is a rush of heart-clenching realizations about your own sense of self-worth, the true values of society, and questions about the ownership of your identity and story - even if you aren't sure you want to own it yourself.
Edward (Stan) is an actor with a facial disfigurement who sticks to himself, doesn't fix the leak in the ceiling of his apartment, and books parts in training videos for companies to learn how to treat people with disabilities just like everyone else. When his doctor tells him of a new experimental procedure that can cure his appearance, he decides to try it so he can be treated normally, like the people in the horrific training videos he shoots.
As Edward's facial growths start to peel off - in a scene one can only describe as a moving Francis Bacon painting - instead of feeling relief, he still feels the need to hide who he is from everyone. That includes his playwright neighbor Ingrid (Reinsve), who has thrust herself into Edward's orbit without fully letting him into hers.
His solution? To fake his own death and reemerge as a new normal guy hastily named Guy. This shedding of his skin seems to be working - he gets a new job as the most shiny of real estate agents and has a new, fancy loft apartment - until he sees that Ingrid has followed through on her goal to write a play with a part for him. Unfortunately, the play is about him, her dead neighbor, and their relationship through her eyes. This is where A Different Man starts to fold in on itself in a brilliant meta statement about representation and authorization within the entertainment industry.
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Warning: This feature contains spoilers about the film.
