A Dif­fer­ent Man review – an atmos­pher­ic, idio­syn­crat­ic thriller

Edward (Sebas­t­ian Stan) knows what every­one thinks when they look at him. Hav­ing devel­oped neu­rofi­bro­mato­sis, a con­di­tion which caus­es large benign tumours to grow on his face, his New York neigh­bours regard him with dis­gust, fear or amuse­ment – rarely any­thing else. While his heart lies in per­form­ing, he strug­gles to book roles as peo­ple can’t look past his facial dif­fer­ences. He lives a lone­ly life in a one-bed apart­ment, which has recent­ly devel­oped an omi­nous stain on the ceil­ing. When a new neigh­bour moves in and intro­duces her­self as a play­wright, Edward is qui­et­ly smit­ten but doubts that the lumi­nous Ingrid (Renate Reinsve) would ever be inter­est­ed in a man like him.

That is until Edward’s doc­tor puts him for­ward for a rad­i­cal new drug tri­al that could poten­tial­ly heal his tumours. For the first time in his adult life, Edward is pre­sent­ed with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of appear­ing ​“nor­mal”. He accepts the offer, and his trans­for­ma­tion begins. Slow­ly his skin begins to peel off in grotesque Cro­nen­ber­gian sliv­ers, and a new, hand­some vis­age appears beneath. Edward is elat­ed – and per­haps qui­et­ly hor­ri­fied – by the results.

Of course a new face – and the suc­cess that invari­ably comes with being attrac­tive by West­ern beau­ty stan­dards – can’t change Edward in every sin­gle way. While his new­found con­fi­dence brings him suc­cess in his new career as a real­tor, some inse­cu­ri­ties are deeply root­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly when he meets Oswald (Adam Pear­son), a man who has the same con­di­tion he had, but has bags of charis­ma and charm, seem­ing­ly mov­ing through the world with an ease that Edward does not pos­sess even as a new man.

Build­ing on the themes of per­for­mance and dif­fer­ence that first emerged in his debut fea­ture Chained for Life, Aaron Schimberg’s A Dif­fer­ent Man is a big­ger bud­get pro­duc­tion but still pos­sess­es a wry sense of humour and pen­chant for the macabre. There’s some­thing of Dostoevsky’s The Dou­ble in the stag­ing, and per­haps a touch of David Lynch’s The Ele­phant Man, albeit with less of the pathos. The oth­er notable ref­er­ence, whether inten­tion­al or not, is pos­si­bly the Simp­sons episode ​“Pyg­moelian”, in which Moe Szys­lak under­goes surgery to give him­self a hand­some appear­ance and devel­ops a suc­cess­ful act­ing career as a result.

The under­ly­ing idea that good looks don’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late into an eas­i­er exis­tence, par­tic­u­lar­ly when your per­son­al­i­ty is less than win­ning, is a lit­tle old hat, but Schim­berg breathes new life into the clich­es – par­tic­u­lar­ly through the charis­ma of Adam Pear­son, who is a won­der­ful foil to Sebas­t­ian Stan’s nervy, indig­nant Edward. It’s worth men­tion­ing the excel­lent pro­duc­tion design too, which gives the film a dingy feel­ing, even when the char­ac­ters aren’t rehears­ing at the theatre.

Although A Dif­fer­ent Man slight­ly runs out of steam in its sec­ond half, it’s an effec­tive­ly atmos­pher­ic and idio­syn­crat­ic thriller, deft­ly exam­in­ing the patro­n­is­ing atti­tudes that pre­vail regard­ing dif­fer­ence and dis­abil­i­ty, and the knot­ty top­ics of author­ship and enti­tle­ment to oth­er peo­ples’ stories.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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