A Different Man review: "Sebastian Stan is wonderful in this unmissable exploration of beauty, artistry, and identity"

Writer/director Aaron Schimberg (2018’s Chained for Life) crafts one of the most original works you’re likely to see this year. A Different Man is in essence a meta-movie, one that cunningly examines issues surrounding beauty and artistic creation. 

Some distance removed from his MCU Bucky/Winter Soldier persona, Sebastian Stan plays Ed, a New Yorker who is living with neurofibromatosis. Yet when a doctor offers a miracle-drug treatment, Ed’s life changes overnight: his facial tumours simply fall away, leaving him unrecognisable to all those that know him. 

Instead of revealing he’s been cured, Ed decides to take on a new identity, recasting his life in a new image. Even his neighbour Ingrid (Renate Reinsve, from The Worst Person in the World), a budding playwright, has no idea that it’s the same old Ed. But this is just the start of Schimberg’s increasingly oddball venture, which mixes body horror with dark comedy, not least when Ingrid decides to turn Ed’s story into an off-Broadway drama. 

Stan, who bagged the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, has surely never been better. Meanwhile, there’s a terrifically assured turn from Under the Skin/Chained for Life’s Adam Pearson (who has neurofibromatosis in real life), as Oswald, who emerges as something of a rival to Ed. But the real star, arguably, is Schimberg’s script, which feels like the love child of David Cronenberg and Charlie Kaufman. Fiercely inventive and utterly strange, A Different Man really is something else.

A Different Man is in US theaters now and is released in UK cinemas on October 4. You can keep up to date with all the other most exciting upcoming movies with our guide through the link.