A Different Man

A Different Man is about the latter, which somehow seems the more tragic of the two. Attaining one goal inevitably leads to seeking out another, or in some cases questioning whether you wanted it in the first place. Such is the fate of Sebastian Stan’s character in Aaron Schimberg’s third feature, which brings to mind everything from The Elephant Man to Flowers for Algernon in its exploration of facial differences, miracle cures, and the tragedy of realizing your problems were always more than skin deep.

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People often think they know Edward from somewhere, but they’re always wrong — or are they? Some strangers tap on restaurant windows to wave at him, while others come up to him on the street and insist they’ve met before. If he didn’t have his face, which is covered in tumors due to a condition called neurofibromatosis, you might believe that he has one of those faces.

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And then his face falls off. Or, rather, the tumors that cover it do. Edward recently volunteered for an experimental treatment with the potential to cure his affliction; as in all movies about such treatments, it miraculously works. But rather than happily report his progress to his doctors or the playwright neighbor with whom he’s smitten (Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World), he begins living under the name of Guy and tells anyone who asks that Edward took his own life. Guy, as anyone who’s seen Sebastian Stan already knows, is handsome in a “gets by on his looks” kind of way and infinitely happier than Edward ever was — for a time, at least.

What follows from here is twisty verging on convoluted. Guy lands a role in a play written by that former neighbor and based on his former self before meeting a man named Oswald who almost perfectly resembles his former self. Schimberg doesn’t make it easy on us, or on his characters — we’re all caught in a labyrinth of his making, one that tends to be more amusing than frustrating to navigate. A Different Man is rarely subtle in its messaging, but it is darkly funny as it hammers home its points.

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If all this makes it sound like the film would make for one half of an off-kilter double feature alongside The Substance, that’s because it would. Both get under the skin of their image-obsessed protagonists to reveal their true nature, which is dissatisfied in a way that no cosmetic procedure can change.

What follows from here is twisty verging on convoluted.

Oswald is played by Adam Pearson, an English actor who, unlike Sebastian Stan, actually has neurofibromatosis and whose face clearly inspired the prosthesis that Stan wears in the film’s first act. (Schimberg and Pearson previously collaborated on Chained for Life, an equally strange picture, and Schimberg wrote Oswald specifically for him.) He’s everything Edward wasn’t: confident, outgoing, and comfortable in his own skin. Why is it so easy for him, Edward surely wonders, when it was so miserable for me?

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This self-reflexive impulse is the film’s thorniest aspect, as well as its most compelling. Even when they aren’t putting on a play, everyone is giving a performance — no one more so than Guy, who can’t stand to see someone else encroaching on the role he feels he was quite literally born to play. The face he presents to the world isn’t the one he sees when he looks in the mirror, a disparity that slowly drives him mad. The best version of ourselves is rarely what we expect it to be, ditto movies about the perpetual discontent that defines so many of us. A Different Man might not be a panacea, but neither is it a placebo. Watch it and call me in the morning.