Much is made of risk and reward in A Different Man. Edward (Sebastian Stan) approaches a miracle cure for his neurofibromatosis with the same diffidence that seeps into every corner of his hermetic existence. From walks to the grocery store and rides on the subway to awkward visits with his beautiful new neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), Edward has made it his mission to move through the world in a way that minimizes any effect on his surroundings; ironically, he is also an aspiring actor. Completely unable to assert his presence in ways both physical and social, his misguided attempts to evade lasting notice are something that his disfigured appearance makes almost impossible. He takes no risks, and to say that he reaps no rewards doesn't even begin to cover it.
His awareness of the losing game that he plays every day of his life never seems to inspire a change in outlook or behaviour — that is, until a coterie of overeager doctors gently coerce him into the aforementioned experimental treatment, claiming, perhaps disingenuously, that the rewards outweigh the risks. What follows is a cautionary tale, prolonged prank and earnest tragicomedy rolled into one, all the more rich and affecting for its lack of easy conclusions to any of these competing strains.
The buildup to this non-decision is slow and strategic, patiently inducing and gradually escalating the film's aura of menace and irony. Eyes leer and avert their gaze, Ingrid makes feeble attempts to ease the tension between them, and a neglected leak in Edward's roof grows wider and wider as murky fluids, dead mice and, finally, hazardously blunt objects break through the expanding rot. The doctors administer the drug with little ceremony and plenty of doubt, but the changes that Edward slowly begins to see push the proceedings toward body horror, with pain, terror and confusion functioning as gateways to meaningful mutation.
Bursting through an intricate prosthesis of benign tumours, Edward — now bearing the classical features and refined weariness of the actor playing him — begins his life anew. He pivots to real estate under a false name and estranges himself from a reeling, guilt-ridden Ingrid, who was led to believe he died by suicide.
A struggling theatrician herself, Ingrid had spent their time together building her first play around a role tailor-made for his condition. When Edward — now the everyman "Guy" — stumbles back into her life, she is unsuccessfully auditioning actors for this lead in "Edward," now in production off-Broadway. Sporting the 3D-printed mask of his former visage that the doctors gifted him for posterity, Guy's eerie approximation of the Edward she knew both disturbs and intrigues Ingrid, who casts him against her better judgement.
A delirious tangle of ethical concerns surrounding performance, spectacle and exploitation is completely overturned by the late entrance of Oswald (Adam Pearson), a confident bloke with a similar facial condition who boasts all of the self-possession and charm that Edward still lacks (and an exotic English accent to boot). Pearson is positively mesmerizing as a man so adept at social interaction — endearing himself to his counterparts while also making them feel valued and considered — that it verges on sinister. Faced with the sum of everything he couldn't, can't and can never be, Edward's navigation of the stress and strife of theatre production is complicated, and superseded, by surmounting feelings of inadequacy.
Even as his life falls to pieces around him, he continually fails to assert himself; his newly "normal" face has only doomed him further to anonymity. Writer and director Aaron Schimberg's sense of humour is sadistic and empathetic in equal measure, stacking the deck against our shapeshifting schlimazel in sly and startling ways. Much more in tune with the eccentricities of human behaviour than the average Sundance flick, A Different Man struts through its lengthy runtime with the swagger and confidence that its doomed subject can only aspire to (whether this is earned tends to change from scene to scene). Every time it veers into smirking condescension toward its incredibly foolish characters, a new shade emerges through dialogue and performance that reminds us of their essential, and often painful, humanity.
A wryly conceptual and cheekily confrontational portrait of punishment and failure, A Different Man wears its imperfections with an elegance that bespeaks self-awareness. Though the same cannot be said of Edward, this is not a bug but a feature.