Paul is an actor who feels bogged down by his participation in a production of Chekov's play, Vanya.
Civilization and its discontents. Paul, an actor preparing for "Uncle Vanya" on Broadway, is mired in ennui. His agent tells him about an office where he can put his soul in storage. He does so then discovers that being soulless helps neither his acting nor his marriage; he returns to the office and rents, for two weeks, the soul of a Russian poet. His acting improves, but his wife finds him different, he sees bits of the borrowed soul's life, and he's now deep in sorrow. He wants his own soul back, but there are complications: it's in St. Petersburg. With the help of Nina, a Russian who transports souls to the U.S., he determines to get it back. Who has he become?—<[email protected]>
Giamatti stars as a fictionalised version of himself, an anxious, overwhelmed actor who decides to enlist the service of a company to deep freeze his soul. Complications ensue when his soul gets lost in a soul trafficking scheme which has taken his soul to St. Petersburg. The film then follows Giamatti desperately trying to recover his soul.
Paul Giamatti is a well-known American actor living in New York City who is depressed and is having trouble with his latest role, Uncle Vanya. After a suggestion from his agent and seeing information about the concept in New Yorker magazine, Paul goes to a business specializing in soul storage. Dr. Flintstein tells Paul about the benefits and side effects of having his soul extracted, and he shows Paul containers with the souls of celebrities, though he cannot divulge who the souls belong to. The souls look like small ordinary objects.
Paul agrees to go through the procedure, and he is put in a machine resembling Michael Jackson's hyperbaric chamber but not see-through. He is told afterward that only 95 percent of his soul was removed, and he is shown a container with what looks like a chickpea. This is put in what looks like a safe deposit box, in a room where many souls are stored.
While Paul is at the soul storage business, Nina arrives from St. Petersburg, Russia. Earlier, she arrived at the airport wearing a short black wig calling herself Olga, and was required to have her picture taken and to be fingerprinted. At her hotel, she took off the wig revealing she had blonde hair, and she removed a fake fingerprint.
Paul is still having problems in his real life and on stage.
Dimitri runs his own soul storage business in Russia, extracting and selling Russian souls to Americans. Nina is one of his employees, a "mule" who makes deliveries secretly. She makes regular visits to the business Paul visited. One woman in Russia desperately wants her soul back and is told she signed a contract that will not allow this. Meanwhile, Dimitri's beautiful soap opera actress wife Sveta is unhappy, and one possible solution is for her to receive a soul from the United States. She is told she will get Al Pacino.
Paul tries having a Russian poet's soul put inside him. He is quite effective on stage rehearsing the role of Uncle Vanya. but he is still not happy.
On one of her visits to the soul storage business, Nina distracts the receptionist Stephanie and takes a look at her files, then she steals the soul of the one actor the business has--Paul.
Paul wants his soul back. It is missing. Eventually, Paul locates Nina and tells her he wants his soul back. This means both of them take a trip to Russia. Sveta is unwilling to voluntarily give up her soul, so she is drugged during a party and taken to Dimitri's operation and has Paul's soul extracted. It is still like a chickpea, but now dried up. While in Russia, Nina and Paul visit the home of Olga, the poet whose soul Paul rented, who had committed suicide.
When Paul returns to New York City, Homeland Security is helping a hedge fund remove everything at the soul storage business. Paul is happy once again once his soul is restored to him. Nina, however, cannot get her soul back because of residue from the souls she has transported.
