A Different Man needs to be seen to be believed

In one of the most famous scenes in Back To The Future, Marty McFly plays a Van Halen-inspired rendition of Johnny B. Goode which leaves the crowd stunned.

Displaying the cheeky charisma and wit that made him a global star, Michael J Fox delivers the line “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet – but your kids are gonna love it.”

A Different Man might be too off-beat or esoteric for the layman, but if you want a film that takes a gamble on originality this is the film for you.

Sebastian Stan stars as Edward, a man with neurofibromatosis who undergoes an experimental procedure to cure his condition in a bid to be “normal.”

Edward lives in squalor and sees the experimental treatment as a way of becoming a new man, free from what he perceives to be the burden of his condition.

In the early stages of the film, Edward connects with his next door neighbour named Ingrid, played by Renate Reinsve.

Ingrid fancies herself as a budding playwright but hasn’t quite found the right material.

Ingrid gradually realises that her subject is staring her in the face and starts to develop a play based on Edward and his condition.

Edward, who now believes himself to be “free” from his condition, and with a brand new face in tow, decides to rewrite himself as a confident, handsome man and stars in Ingrid’s new play.

In the classic Twilight Zone twist, Edward soon finds that the old adage of “be careful what you wish for” is sage advice.

Stan is best known for his role as Captain America’s best friend Bucky Barnes, but in recent years he has developed an interesting character actor streak by playing the likes of Tommy Lee in Pam & Tommy, a dumb tech bro in Dumb Money and will soon be seen on our screens as Donald Trump in The Apprentice.

Here, Stan weaponises his human Ken doll look to great effect, with the handsome exterior merely keeping a darker side at bay.

Renate Reinsve makes her English-language film debut following her breakout in The Worst Person In The World in 2021 and this film will only add to the next Isabelle Huppert tag.

Reinsve plays her scenes with that effervescent, bubbly spark that made her such a breakout in her native Norwegian but can just as easily flip a switch into being manipulative within the same scene.

A lot of the film’s ideas surrounding the exploitation of people with conditions fall to her playwright character, and Reinsve manages to convey herself as the tortured artist type who believes she is changing the world through her art.

At just around the hour mark, English TV personality Adam Pearson is introduced and promptly steals the film.

Pearson’s character, Oswald, discovers that a play is being made about a man with his condition and enters the film with the force of a hurricane.

Pearson’s performance is, simply put, one of the best performances we’ve seen this year and needs to be seen to be believed.

Pearson has been the subject of a BBC documentary about his life, has hosted a documentary series on eugenics, and has worked in a production capacity on dating show The Undateables.

Pearson worked with Schimberg on his calling card film, Chained For Life, and we cannot wait to see what this actor-director pair does next.

Schimberg recognises that Pearson is a wickedly funny and hilarious talent, and is able to change the temperature of a scene simply by being in it.

Eddie Murphy’s breakout moment as a performer came in the famous bar scene in 48 Hours, when Nick Nolte’s grizzled detective cedes the floor to his partner.

Murphy announces himself to the world in a blistering, foul-mouthed rant that put Murphy on the road to superstardom and in watching Pearson’s performance in A Different Man, it’s not hard to imagine you are seeing the 2024 equivalent.

Pearson’s path to movie stardom is as unlikely as it is fully deserved; he is likely to be doing the rounds on talk shows and podcasts during promotion for this film ahead of a possible Oscar nomination; make it your business to catch this rising star while you can.

As the film progresses, Oswald is the man who becomes the centre of attention and it is Edward who is left in the dust.

A Different Man is likely to draw comparisons to the work of Charlie Kaufman, more specifically the 1999 classic Being John Malkovich.

Writer/director Aaron Schimberg has an uncanny knack for marrying Kaufman-esque heady ideas with the slightly heightened reality that Spike Jonze is able to expertly craft in his films.

The film falls down slightly and tries to bite off more than it can chew with the overarching story – it must have been hard to describe the film in a simple elevator pitch.

A Different Man gets a bit too in the weeds with Edward trying to keep his past life a secret, and while a character doubling down on a lie is usually the premise for comedic gold the film doesn’t quite know what to do with Edward post-transformation.

A lot of events and changes to the structure happen off-screen; the film clocks at just under two hours, and while we usually mark a film down for going too long it would have been fine for the film to be two hours on the dot if it meant we fully understood character motivations.

With that fairly major caveat, the confidence in the actors, as well as the darkly funny script, makes up for the shortcomings.

We will put up with some minor script imperfections if it means we get more films like this.

Strikingly original, brilliantly acted and with a wicked sense of humour at its core, A Different Man is the kind of film people might not appreciate at the time but is destined to become a classic 25 years down the line.

As we said in our review of The Substance (which would make for a fun double pairing with this), films of this originality and audacity don’t come around very often; if you are serious about the future of cinema as an artform and are sick of superhero or franchise slop in your local multiplexes, drop everything and see this film.