By Design

"By Design" is only going to appeal to a certain small handful of weirdos, but I guess you can count me as one of them. The movie's brilliant logline -- a woman swaps bodies with a chair and everyone likes her better as a chair -- certainly sounds strange, but I promise you its even stranger than that. You'll know within minutes if this is for you, and I would suspect it isn't for many. But if you, like me, happen to find yourself on the proper wavelength, you're in for a utterly fascinating and very funny experience that will have you scrambling to the internet to find out what other movies director Amanda Kramer has made.

Camille (Juliette Lewis) is a relatively happy and well-adjusted person, as we are told by the frequently-occurring narrator (Melanie Griffith). She meets regularly for lunch with her friends Lisa (Samantha Mathis) and Irene (Robin Tunney), and Camille can't help but feel like she is just there to be a sounding board for her much more boisterous and successful friends. The trio heads out for some shopping at a high-end furniture store, where Camille becomes utterly gobsmacked by the beauty of a wooden chair. She vows to come back and buy it the next day but someone else beats her to it, sending Camille into a breakdown that somehow results in her soul entering the chair while her body just slumps over and lies on the floor.

Most of the movie's messaging is extremely literal, which makes things even funnier. Camille so badly wants to be like the chair -- strong, sleek, useful, attractive, desired, valued highly. It plainly speaks to our basic human desire to be wanted and how that desire is tied up in to society's fixation on beauty. Camille is feeling alone and unwanted, and so, Camille becomes the chair, which gives her great happiness (which we know because Camille's/the chair's thoughts are relayed to us by the narrator). Scenes are often peppered with interpretative dancing, which help us embody the emotions felt by the chair (which are often sexual; there is much licking and "face-sitting"). The cinematography and lighting is often exquisite, paired with a lovely classical score that rises and falls as dancers writhe around the chair in a completely ridiculous (but strangely beautiful) manner.

Meanwhile, Camille's motionless body is draped over her bed in her apartment, as her mother and friends come to visit her, talking incessantly about themselves while the camera comically cuts to Camille's unmoving face. "You've become such a good listener," her mother remarks. It's more very literal commentary on how most people just want to talk about themselves and likely wouldn't notice if you didn't respond at all. Camille isn't a person to them, just someone they can dump their own problems and needs onto.

The other half of this story belongs to Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), who has recently been dumped by a woman he feels he never really knew. He is given the chair as a gift and also immediately becomes infatuated with it, finding in it an opportunity to possess something (and someone) that is completely his. He brings the chair to a dinner party, jealously refusing to let others sit on it, wanting nothing more than to be at home alone with his chair (cue more sexual chair grinding and dancing). Athie is a lithe and beautiful man with a truly mournful look in his eyes, elevating his scenes to a even higher level of sensuality (or as sensual as it gets when we're talking about being in love with a chair).

Even those who are enjoying the movie this far may start to get annoyed with the non-stop strangeness, as it often feels more like a modern dance performance or art exhibit. Eventually the chair and Camille's body are reunited, and Olivier sees the true face of the chair-soul he has fallen in love with, resulting in a truly fantastic meltdown, performed admirably by Lewis.

If you're with me this far, I'm sure you've already decided if you're on board for a movie with this kind of surreal, uncanny vibe. You can't help but admire Kramer's unique vision and the way she realizes it so fully and with such tremendous style. The themes may not be subtle and it may not even hold together as a cohesive narrative, but for some, that might be a feature and not a bug.