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‘By Design’ Review: Juliette Lewis Plays a Chair in an Absurdist Comedy That Fascinates and Alienates

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‘By Design’ Review: Juliette Lewis Plays a Chair in an Absurdist Comedy That Fascinates and Alienates

Since her female-led Lord of the Flies riff Ladyworld premiered at Fantasia Fest in 2018, director Amanda Kramer’s films have gotten progressively weirder and more abstract. Her subsequent films Please, Baby, Please and Give Me Pity! were both experimental musicals shot and performed in a vintage style. Please, Baby, Please — the more ambitious of the two — boasted the return of Demi Moore, bringing her into the arthouse and paving the way for her career resurgence as the star of The Substance.

By Design also makes a point to bring back actresses Hollywood has been ignoring for years — Robin Tunney, Samantha Mathis, Melanie Griffith and, of course, Academy Award nominee Juliette Lewis. And in Kramer’s dreamland they don’t have to play tired moms or put-upon teachers; they can simply live a stylish life, quipping and conversing with each other onscreen.

By Design

The Bottom Line

Not for everyone, in a good way.

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Venue: Sundance Film Festival (NEXT)
Cast: Juliette Lewis, Samantha Mathis, Robin Tunney, Udo Kier, Mamoudou Athie, Alisa Torres, Madison McKinley, Clifton Collins Jr., Betty Buckley, Melanie Griffith
Director/Writer: Amanda Kramer

1 hour 32 minutes

The film tells the story of Camille (Lewis) a single, middle-aged woman carving out a quiet existence with her two best friends, Lisa (Mathis) and Irene (Tunney). After lunch one day, the women go shopping and Camille falls in love with a beautiful golden brown chair. The narrator (Griffith) refers to it as a stunner, and the sentiment is shared by almost everyone who sees it. The wood is high-quality with a smooth, chic design that would lend itself well to an elegant home. From the moment Camille sees the chair, she’s compelled to purchase it, despite how expensive it is. Camille, Lisa and Irene all fawn over the chair while the saleswoman Sarah (Madison McKinley) looks on with annoyance. The chair is so expensive that Camille has to go home that night and check her finances before returning to purchase it.

But the morning she arrives, cash in hand, the chair has already been sold to Marta (Alisa Torres) as a parting gift to her ex-boyfriend Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), a handsome and heartbroken pianist. Dejected, Camille asks Sarah if she can touch the chair before leaving. But once she does, something magic happens: Her soul leaves her body and enters the chair. 

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Irene takes Camille’s body home while her soul is wrapped up with the chair and delivered to Olivier. Its presence immediately improves his mood, and Olivier begins using the chair as emotional support. Marta has taken all the other furniture, so the chair sits in the middle of his home, serving as his only companion. Perhaps it’s Camille’s spirit that draws him to the chair, giving him comfort and allowing him to work through his loneliness.

Meanwhile, Camille’s body lies motionless in her apartment while her friends and family come over and try to spend time with her. Comedically, they all assume she’s giving them the silent treatment for one reason or another, and they become convinced she’s suffering from a deep depression. But our narrator reveals the truth: Camille isn’t depressed or jealous of any other person. Throughout the film, Camille’s favorite quote is repeated: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Camille doesn’t want the money or love lives of her friends. She’s not depressed in any traditional sense, being content with the smallness of her life. It’s living that she seems to have little interest in. What she wants is to be adored without having to perform the tasks of being a real, live person. Camille wants to be coveted, desired and admired for simply being a beautiful thing. 

And Olivier loves her as the chair, perhaps because of Camille’s calming spirit. By Design is the kind of film that isn’t afraid to be corny, treating Olivier and Camille’s connection as man and chair as seriously as any other relationship. When Olivier goes to dinner with his friends, he brings the chair with him. When he sleeps, he dreams of people crowding him, intruding on his intimate time with it. Camille is just happy to be needed and provide care without having to be herself.

But eventually, as the people around them get increasingly frustrated with the odd couple’s dreamlike connection, real life threatens to kill Camille’s fantasy. Kramer’s script is philosophical, the film questioning the very nature of what it means to live and the burdens of emotions like love, hate and jealousy. 

By Design is a gorgeous film, with stylized interiors and attractive people in stylish, colorful clothes. The world Camille inhabits is a beautiful one and all she wants is to be one of the beautiful things a production designer would add to a scene. Why star in the film when you can just be still, waiting for admiring eyes? In contrast to Camille’s desires, By Design deploys a group of dancers who exist in her and Olivier’s dream spaces. It’s in these moments that the film feels more like performance art, externalizing a pleasure so abstract that it defies verbal explanation.

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But Griffith’s narration puts all the absurd scenes into context, her iconic, flirty and feminine voice gently guiding us through the film’s theatrical beats. Much like Give Me Pity!, By Design feels like a performance piece centered on one woman’s unique mind. The insights and artistic inclinations that populate Kramer’s work aren’t for everyone, and there’s a good chance By Design won’t connect with most viewers. But the alienating nature of the premise is what makes it fascinating, pushing us to question how we want to be seen and experienced as people in the world. With all the constant demands of living, wouldn’t it be peaceful to sit still for a little while?

Movie Reviews

‘Loveyapa’ movie review: Junaid Khan and Khushi Kapoor toil in this shallow rom-com

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‘Loveyapa’ movie review: Junaid Khan and Khushi Kapoor toil in this shallow rom-com

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 
| Photo Credit: @zeecafe/YouTube

Smartphone is the new villain in love stories. Screenwriters looking for new obstacles for love birds have discovered social evils on the web. After Muddassar Aziz used phone swapping to generate humour in Khel Khel Main, director Advait Chandan recycles the Tamil hit Love Today to create a romantic comedy about the ill effects of social media and artificial intelligence on relationships in Loveyapa.

Baani (Khushi Kapoor) and Gaurav (Junaid Khan) feel their romance is transparent till Baani’s father Atul (Ashutosh Rana) asks them to swap their phones before they exchange vows. As the phones get unlocked, it opens Pandora’s chat box with the video libraries and vaults of phones revealing secrets that both are not ready to overlook.

Written by Sneha Desai, the film makes interesting observations on how the young generation is losing touch with reality and how there is a distinct difference in their online and offline character. In this game of choices, there is no gender divide. It also touches upon the issues of online fat shaming and the emerging scourge of deepfakes.

Loveyapa (Hindi)

Director: Advait Chandan

Cast: Junaid Khan, Khushi Kapoor, Ashutosh Rana, Grusha Kapoor, Kiku Sharda

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Runtime: 137 minutes

Synopsis: Pushed by the girl’s father, when a couple exchange their phones, their relationship spirals into a crisis.

However, after setting the stage, Loveyapa comes across a skit bloated into a feature film with gaseous matter. It is like a video game with no second level and gradually reads like a visual essay on the ills of the internet. Ironically, the commentary on the emerging necessary evil in society uses the film to promote the latest model of a smartphone in the market.

Made for an audience that expresses its deepest emotions through ready-made emojis, the screenplay suffers from generation loss and a sense of ennui fills you after the popcorn break. One waits for the next box to be ticked followed by a few guffaws.

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 

A still from ‘Loveyapa’ 
| Photo Credit:
@zeecafe/YouTube

Both Junaid and Khushi are earnest in their performance but if screen presence is something casting directors look for, both have a long way to go. They lack the charm that could tide over the blanks in storytelling. Learning on the sets, Khushi carries a consistent smile and sounds like her sister Janhvi. Junaid is a work in progress and is perhaps better suited for intense roles. His eyes twinkle like his father Aamir Khan’s gaze in the second half but there is not much heft in the story to employ them.

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As always, star kids bank on a strong support cast. Ashutosh Rana once again channelises his chaste Hindi to evoke awe. Grusha Kapoor and Kiku Sharda do the heavy lifting to accentuate the melodrama for those who love to drink new wine from the old bottle.

Loveyapa is currently running in theatres

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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: ‘Love Hurts’ Makes for a Painful Viewing Experience

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Movie Review: ‘Love Hurts’ Makes for a Painful Viewing Experience
Director: Jonathan EusebioWriters: Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, Luke PassmoreStars: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Mustafa Shakir, Marshawn Lynch Synopsis: A hitman-turned-realtor is forced to confront his past. I was excited for Love Hurts. I was ready to sit back and bask in the glow of the Ke Huy Quan Renaissance. The Academy Award winner from Everything Everywhere All at Once, best KE HUY QUAN’s LOVE HURTS is reviewed.
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Movie Reviews

Vidaamuyarchi Movie Review: A film about the power of faith, not of fists

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Vidaamuyarchi Movie Review: A film about the power of faith, not of fists

It’s a joy when films break out of what they are supposed to be as star vehicles. Vidaamuyarchi begins with an extremely sensitive topic, and treats it with such gentleness and without judgment. Arjun (Ajith) is, at heart, a vulnerable softie, incapable of prejudice and hatred. He can’t trust the cops, and yet, he cannot stand by to see them die. His enemies subject him to such humiliation and cruelty, and yet, he gets no pleasure out of hurting them. His wife, well—she wants to move on from him, and yet, he seeks no retribution. Arjun isn’t a hero; he’s a vulnerable man forced into a fight he does not enjoy.

We see this quality many times in the film. In the petrol bunk scene, we see clear evidence that Arjun is an emotionally mature man who isn’t looking to escalate things. “They’re young and are looking for trouble,” he says. Ordinarily, in our cinema, we are trained to expect him to turn into a vengeful demon figure, who makes enemies run for life. Vidaamuyarchi, despite having the structure for it, refuses to turn Arjun into a Vedalam-like fearsome presence. It’s such a brave choice. Towards the end, when someone asks, “Nee enna hero-va?“, Ajith responds with an outraged no, almost begging them to understand. It feels almost like a plea to the world.

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