OK, you want something really different, here you go. You don’t need to know this to enjoy it, but Anomalisa, one of the year’s most creative efforts, throws around Fregoli syndrome like water. Main character Michael Stone (David Thewlis), who’s some kind of retail business guru/writer (“May I Help You Help Them?”) checks into a Cincinnati hotel where he’s apparently the star of the convention about to take place.
Stone seems miserable, a quality co-director Charlie Kaufman (director of the lackluster Synecdoche, New York, itself fixated on Capgras syndrome) is quite adept at conveying. Kaufman’s weapon? Stop-motion or rotoscope animation–the kind from Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (2001). Seems it’s a phenomenal medium when paired up with a vision this exaltingly fresh. Kaufman, veteran screenwriter of such gems as Eternal Sunshine of The Spotkess Mind, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation, hits a home run here.
But back to Fregoli Syndrome. Everyone Stone will encounter on his movie looks the exactly the same–except a certain gal to whom he’s strangely attracted, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a somewhat frumpy, unlikely heroine. It takes some getting used to, alright. Yet Anomalisa is hardly a gimmick or one-note movie. Co-directed with Duke Johnson of StarBurns Industries, Anomalisa does for sculpted clay maquettes with face-replacement animation what Ralph Bakshi did for X-rated cartoons (incidentally, there’s a great sex scene in Anomalisa–though it’s the harrowing flip side of any prurient interest factor in case you’re wondering).
Adapted from a Kaufman play performed (only twice!) at UCLA in 2005, Anomalisa uses the same three actors the play did: Thewlis (if you haven’t seen him in Mike Leigh’s 2005 Naked, get on it!), Leigh (as excellent here as in The Hateful Eight; her version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is priceless) and actor/director Tom Noonan , who voices all of the “Fregoli people.”
By the way, this film captures the small moments of our existence with an uncanny brilliance and, in its conclusion, skillfully strives for an existential theme. Or, to be more exact, themes–since its “message” is hardly clear and unanimous. Kaufman’s ambiguity is far more refreshing than halting; it asks the viewer to lend a hand.
Suffice it to say that there are moments in Anomalisa when things happening on the screen get under the viewer’s skin in a manner that may be totally new to cinema. And these moments smack dab reach a primal level of our consciousness.
And you were thinking of skipping this film?