Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson prop up Aaron Schimberg’s dark and bold exploration of identity.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News

Jekyll and Hyde, Batman and Bruce Wayne, Dorian Gray and his portrait in the attic, Dad when he was sober and Dad when he was not, the Beast and the Prince (we preferred the Beast), Janus, we’ve seen more than one example of a man with two faces in art history. This popular theme is explored anew in writer-director Aaron Schimberg’s gloomy, moody “A Different Man,” a title with a built-in pun. The different men in “A Different Man” are a multitude. We begin with Edward Lemuel (Sebastian Stan), a man and an actor whose name recalls a certain Swiftian traveler. Like Joseph “John” Merrick, the Elephant Man of Victorian England (and of the brilliant 1980 film by David Lynch with John Hurt), Edward has neurofibromatosis, i.e., painful tumors that disfigure his face and threaten his eyesight and hearing. He is introduced to us while he is acting before a camera. We will learn more later.

At the start, Edward returns to his modest New York City apartment and discovers black fluid dripping from the ceiling. The bowl he sets out is obviously too small. Next door, he has a new neighbor, a beautiful, tall, and svelte young woman named Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), who is an aspiring writer. She is kind to Edward and befriends him. But when he moves to kiss her, she pulls away and leaves. At the same time, Edward is enrolled in a program of experimental drugs used perhaps to cure his condition. Is this “The Substance II?” One might say that Edward longs to be a different man.

Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson in "A Different Man." (Matt Infante)
Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson in “A Different Man.” (Matt Infante)

Edward is more than just a man with a frightening, living mask for a face. He is stared at on the subway, and vulgar passersby often harass him. The film also has multiple people banging on doors, causing the audience to jump and the onscreen Edward to slash a finger. Be prepared for lots of puking. In the meantime, Ingrid has affairs with multiple good-looking young men.
It seems Ingrid is a chip off the old block of Julie, the sexually active young woman Reinsve played in Joachim Trier’s acclaimed 2021 effort “The Worst Person in the World.” Something begins to happen to Edward. His swollen face falls away in pieces, big and small. Paging David Cronenberg (again). Eventually, Edward, who Stan plays with prosthetic make-up, possesses Stan’s handsome face.
In a bit of hall-of-mirrors trickery, Ingrid writes a play titled “Edward” based on Edward and is directing it at a small, local theater. Using the pseudonym Guy, the newly handsome Edward, who has enjoyed the perks of being newly good-looking, succeeds in getting cast in the lead, wearing a mask of himself with neurofibromatosis made by his doctors. Thus, Edward plays a role based on himself when he is still disfigured but played by the ahem, “new Guy.”

Schimberg, working on a dark (and I mean dark) film noir/Grand-Guignol canvas, makes “A Different Man” at times an unpleasant experience, although it may be worth it to see Stan as the man with two faces. Schimberg delights in rubbing our noses in the nastiness. He may as well be banging us on the head. Ingrid and Guy become lovers, although she requests some odd sexual cosplay. As if being transformed from the Elephant Man to Bucky Barnes is not enough, an actor named Oswald (Adam Pearson, the talented co-star of Schimberg’s previous film), an Englishman with neurofibromatosis, arrives on the scene and becomes interested in playing Edward. The easily distracted Ingrid becomes enamored by the idea. Thus, the real Edward, aka “Guy” (and also Stan, who in a bit of cosmic irony also plays Donald Trump in the upcoming” The Apprentice”), finds himself being replaced in a role based on him by a more authentic version of his old self. Oh, the irony. It’s all very clever and full of twists. But it’s not exactly Pirandello. Michael Shannon shows up as himself in final scenes, another face in Schimberg’s crowded mirror.

‘A Different Man’

Rating: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language, and some violent content.
Cast: Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve, Adam Pearson.
Director-Writer: Aaron Schimberg
Running time: 112 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, The Brattle, Coolidge Corner
Grade: B+