"This bleakly funny New York-set fable" is about "acting, masks and, oh yes, the ultimate emptiness of the self", said Kevin Maher in The Times. Marvel veteran Sebastian Stan dons prosthetics to play Edward, a would-be actor with neurofibromatosis, a rare disorder that has left him disfigured by tumours.
At first, we see him shuffling around in "self-hating despair" – but his life starts to change when he meets Ingrid (Renate Reinsve), an attractive playwright who promises to write him a lead part; then, he is offered an experimental cure, raising the prospect of "romance and alleged normalcy". As his old face is graphically "ripped apart", to reveal Stan's square-jawed good looks, the stage seems set for a "handsome male success story" – but that is when this "original and daring" film "begins to get really devious".
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