By Peter Keough

It is on the universal theme of identity that A Different Man resonates most eloquently, demonstrating how who we are is not fixed but chosen, a mask we don whether it fits or not.

A Different Man. Directed by Aaron Schimberg. Screens at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Kendall Square Cinema.

Sebastian Stan in A Different Man.

There’s an early scene in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man which epitomizes the film’s black comic, Kafkaesque weirdness, a pervasive mood that along with its authoritative inventiveness, elevates it above its few lapses. Edward (Sebastian Stan), the hapless protagonist, after being roused by the pounding of emergency workers at his door who have gone to the wrong apartment, watches as they remove the body of a neighbor who has hanged himself. He returns to his bedroom and looks out the window as they haul the stretcher to the ambulance. Out of nowhere comes the inane jingle of an ice cream truck followed by a noisy altercation between the EMTs and the driver of the truck who wants them to move out of the way (this is, needless to say, New York City).

The gonzo absurdity of this sequence calls to mind the mad denouement of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) as well as images in David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) and Roman Polanski’s The Tenant (1976). But the story Schimberg wants to tell is strange enough on its own terms. Edwards suffers from an unspecified facial disfiguration, probably neurofibromatosis, a condition similar to that afflicting Joseph Merrick in Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980). Throughout much of the first part of A Different Man he endures, with resignation, the slights, horrified stares, overt mockery, and general unkindness of the strangers he meets. Invited to participate in the trial of an experimental drug that might cure him, he does so with little enthusiasm, thinking he will probably be given a placebo anyway.

Some brightness enters his life with a pretty new neighbor, Ingrid (Renate Reinsve from the 2021 Oscar nominee The Worst Person in the World), a wannabe writer and bubbly Annie Hall-type. At first, she is briefly shocked by his appearance, but in subsequent encounters expresses compassion, even fetishistic fascination. That is until she touches his face (to squeeze a blackhead of all things). He responds in kind, and she recoils. She leaves him a nice note at his doorstep, along with a jar of skin cream and some chocolates as a tacit, parting gift.

The experimental drug, however, proves to be a success. Edward transforms into Guy (he informs the few who care that Edward committed suicide), a handsome fellow who in one timorous, triumphant, and rather sad night on the town discovers the power and limitations of an attractive appearance. Time passes in a brisk montage and he evolves into an obnoxious real estate super-agent who poses next to his life-size standee cutouts and preens on his TV ads, a mini-Trump regaled by sycophants and groupies.

Is he happy? So it would seem, though one of his one-night stands complains about mouse turds in his swanky new digs. By chance, though, he passes by a tiny Off-Off Broadway theater that is rehearsing for the play that Ingrid, it turns out, actually ended up writing. Unsurprisingly, the script is about her brief encounter with Edward. Insisting that he was born to play the part, Guy/Edward dons an anatomically correct mask of his former face that had been made during his drug treatment and wins the role – and, for a while, Ingrid’s heart.

It would seem to bode a happy ending, in which Guy/Edward has achieved the best of both personae. But this unholy union summons a doppelganger – Oswald, who suffers from the same malady that afflicted Edward but has adjusted to it with lubricious aplomb. Visiting the cast and crew of the play unannounced he wins them over with his gregariousness, repartee, insightful suggestions, and British accent.

He is portrayed by Adam Pearson, a British actor and activist who was unforgettable in Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 masterpiece Under the Skin. He also starred in Schimberg’s previous film, 2018’s Chained for Life, and is himself afflicted with neurofibromatosis. He gives a stunning performance of Best Supporting Actor caliber, a madcap, canny mockery and subversion of stereotypes. In a twist on All About Eve, he gradually undermines Guy in the starring role of Edward’s own life, stealing the part and sending Guy/Edward off to the deep end and into the film’s not entirely successful final act.

So, there’s a lot going on in this movie, and we haven’t even mentioned the suicide’s cat or the psychedelic nudist colony in Canada. In this, his third feature, Schimberg demonstrates dazzling assurance, tautly compressing its complex narrative into under two hours. Equally impressive is his mastery of metaphor and allusion, such as the leaky hole in the ceiling of Edward’s old apartment that recalls similar images in Barton Fink and Repulsion. Odd items, such as a dead mouse, occasionally drop from the moldy void, including something unidentifiable and heavy that gashes Edward’s face and sets in motion  his icky, Cronenbergian transformation into Guy.

In  key scenes throughout the film, Schimberg also archly contrasts illusion and appearance and art and reality. These episodes range from the opening sequence, in which Edward is seen moaning in anguish in what turns out to be a performance in a PSA (he is a halfhearted aspiring actor), to a late occurrence, where a stage set of his old apartment, the orifice-like ceiling hole included, crashes catastrophically in a performance of Ingrid’s play.

Only with the female characters, Ingrid included, does Schimberg falter, as they verge uncomfortably on gender cliches. On the other hand, he shrewdly and satirically confronts the issue of appropriation and exploitation, coming from a position of authority since he had himself been treated as a child for a cleft lip and palate. But it is on the universal theme of identity that A Different Man resonates most eloquently, demonstrating how who we are is not fixed but chosen, a mask we don whether it fits or not.

Peter Keough writes about film and other topics and has contributed to numerous publications. He had been the film editor of the Boston Phoenix from 1989 to its demise in 2013 and has edited three books on film, most recently For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).