Review: 'A Different Man' depicts two ways a life with disability can be lived, and gives actor Adam Pearson a springboard to greatness

In the drama “A Different Man,” writer-director Aaron Schimberg provides an offbeat object lesson in how fate is what one makes of it — and what happens when one discovers that your best life is being lived by someone else.

Edward (played by Sebastian Stan) is a morose man living in New York with dreams of being an actor. Schimberg shows him at work, with a minor role in what turns out to be a training video — to teach employees how not to freak out when they meet a coworker with a physical disability. Edward has neurofibromatosis, a genetic condition that causes his face to be disfigured.

Edward lives a sad, lonely life. He tries to make friends with his neighbor, Ingrid (played by the great Norwegian star Renate Reinsve), a budding playwright, but his self-consciousness about his disfigurement keeps him from showing his feelings for her.

His doctor tells Edward that a researcher he knows is working on a wonder drug that might help lessen Edward’s disfigurement. He gives it a try, and it turns out to be even better than advertised. In a short time, the lesions and skin tags have peeled away, and Edward has a face that looks like — well, like Sebastian Stan without prosthetic makeup. Edward takes on a new persona, Guy, and goes out to be the success he always dreamed of being.

In short order, Guy is a real estate success and sleeping with beautiful women in his new luxury apartment. One day, he comes across an off-Broadway theater, and discovers that Ingrid is auditioning people for her new play — which is largely inspired by her encounters with Edward. Ingrid’s problem is finding an actor, preferably one with a physical condition, to play the lead role. Guy retrieves the mask of his old self, made by the researchers who gave him the wonder drug, and lands the part.

During rehearsals, though, someone steps into the theater. He has a face similar to what Guy used to have when he was Edward. But this fellow, Oswald (played by the British actor Adam Pearson), is happy-go-lucky, enjoying life to its fullest — without letting his disfigured face stand in his way. In short, he’s living happily in ways Edward could never imagine doing, and living a better life than Guy is now.

Here’s the thing that makes “A Different Man” fascinating to watch: Pearson isn’t wearing prosthetics or movie makeup. That’s all him.

Schimberg works hard to make sure Pearson’s casting isn’t a gimmick or exploitative. He and Pearson make such a rich character of Oswald, with an aura of humility and joie de vivre radiating around him, that he steals the movie — though he only enters at about the midpoint. Pearson puts the lie to every narrow cliche we think of when we think of depicting people with disabilities on the screen, and seems to be enjoying himself immensely in the process.

Once that brilliant set-up is sprung, though, Schimberg has a bit of difficulty bringing the movie in for a landing. But Pearson’s performance, and the byplay of Stan and Reinsve to both react to him and be worthy to share the screen with him, makes “A Different Man” an astonishingly different movie experience.

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‘A Different Man’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 4, in theaters. Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violent content. Running time: 112 minutes.