By Bruce Dancis
Scripps Howard News Service

Two provocative films that were easy to miss during their limited theatrical runs last summer are now available on DVD.

‘Cold Souls’ (Fox Home Entertainment, $19.98, rated PG-13)
This is a clever variation on the timeless, Faustian “sell your soul to the devil” theme. But instead of a man selling his soul for love and sex (“Bedazzled”) or athletic prowess (“Damn Yankees”), or making a pact with the devil involving his wife’s womb (“Rosemary’s Baby”), in this case there’s no devilish involvement.

In writer-director Sophie Barthes’ debut feature film, Paul Giamatti plays an actor named … Paul Giamatti, who is having trouble during rehearsals for a New York theatrical production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” Paul, who has the title role, can’t get a handle on his character, and he’s suffering for it.

When he reads an article in The New Yorker about a scientist, Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn), who has developed a method for extracting human souls and storing them, Paul thinks this may be the way out of his problem. He meets with Dr. Flintstein at the offices of the Soul Storage Company, whose slogan is “Is Your Soul Wearing You Down?”

The good doctor tells Paul that “a twisted soul is like a tumor. It’s better to get rid of it.” Paul doesn’t need much convincing, and he’s soon inside a soul-extracting machine that resembles a chubby CAT-scan apparatus.

Although Paul is disappointed that his extracted soul is so small — it looks exactly like a chickpea, or garbanzo bean — the procedure is painless. That is, it’s painless until he resumes his play rehearsals and finds out that a soul-less actor is a lousy actor. “It’s death inside,” says Paul. “I can’t feel a thing.”

So Paul returns to Dr. Flintstein to get his soul back. There’s only one problem — his soul has been misplaced, and he has to temporarily rent a substitute soul, one that is listed in a “Soul Catalogue” as the “soul of a Russian poet.”

To the credit of Barthes and her cast, this darkly hilarious film is presented totally deadpan, in a realistically straightforward manner. There are no winking fantasyland moments. Giamatti is perfectly cast — it’s easy to see him as a tormented actor. Strathairn almost steals the movie with his earnest, almost pragmatic depiction of a scientist/entrepreneur who is truly believes in his product but is basically mad.

The DVD includes a short, whimsical featurettes on the making of the Soul Extractor machine and nine deleted scenes.
‘Flame and Citron’ (IFC Films/MPI Media Group, $19.98, not rated, spoken in Danish and German with English subtitles)

This powerful film about the Danish Resistance to Nazi occupation during the waning days of World War II takes its rightful place among the best dramas about the European Resistance.

Directed and co-written by Ole Christian Madsen, “Flame and Citron” immerses a viewer in the day-to-day struggles of a group of Copenhagen-based freedom fighters. While it may not be the equal of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows,” a brilliantly treacherous 1969 drama about a French Resistance cell that Madsen has cited as an influence on his work, Madsen’s movie is superior to “The Black Book” (2006), from the Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven, and Gillian Armstrong’s “Charlotte Gray” (2001), about a British woman working with the French Resistance.

“Flame and Citron” is based on two real-life Danes who waged an assassination campaign against German soldiers, Gestapo agents and Danish collaborators. The duo make unlikely partners. Flame (Thure Lindhardt) is an affluent, overly confident and sometimes foolhardy young man with bright red hair, while Citron (played by Mads Mikkelsen, the villain Le Chiffre in the Bond film “Casino Royale”) is more grizzled and troubled, a working-class man who’s had to abandon his wife and child to join the underground movement against the Nazis. Yet they work well together as a team of killers.

The two men manage to handle the continual dangers they face, but they have a harder time dealing with suspicions that arise about some of their own leaders in the Danish Resistance. They begin to suspect that their movement has been infiltrated and worry that some of their missions have been intentionally misdirected to target figures who are actually on their side.

“Flame and Citron” is a beautiful-looking film — at a cost of $10 million, it is the most expensive Danish movie ever made — filled with one suspenseful scene after another. It’s a shame that the DVD includes no bonus features, as it would have been illuminating to learn more about the Danish Resistance or to hear Madsen discuss his film and its influences. Nevertheless, “Flame and Citron” leaves a deep impact on viewers.