"All unhappiness in life comes from not accepting what is."
Vancouver International Film Festival
Stan's Edward goes through an experimental drug trial that horrifically cures him of his facial tumours. After a lifetime of trauma, anxiety, and lasting self-consciousness from fearing others' reactions to gawking at his appearance, he soon realizes his mental scarring remains. This triggers a full-blown identity crisis despite suddenly becoming conventionally handsome and good-looking seemingly overnight.
Co-starring the delightful Renate Reinsve as his playwright neighbour who winds up writing and directing a biographical off-Broadway stage play about Edward's life that serves as the film's second act meta premise. Enter a gregarious Adam Pearson, an actor who suffers from neurofibromatosis and lives with the same kind of facial deformities that inspired this film's main character after starring in Schimberg's second feature, Chained for Life. He swoops in to complicate Edward's life representing everything he isn't despite the superficial similarities to his former appearance.
Schimberg and Stan craft a delightfully weird and wonderful New York indie film about the nature of adapting "real life," casting actors to play characters they may not resemble, and the differences between physical and mental attractiveness. It's a blisteringly funny exploitative black comedy with strong psychological body horror riffs that drive its increasingly absurdist elements into strange new areas of self-acceptance.
A Different Man screened at the 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival as part of the Showcase series at the Rio Theatre and Vancouver Playhouse.
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