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Sundance 2025 Review: By Design – “Will be divisive for audiences.”

Samantha Mathis, Juliette Lewis and Robin Tunney appear in By Design by Amanda Kramer, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Patrick Meade Jones

The tagline for By Design reads: “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.”  Immediately intrigued for this film, the latest from writer-director Amanda Kramer, I thought I was prepared for the oddity I was about to see.  I was not.

The film largely follows Camille, played by Juliette Lewis, though if you think you’ll see a lot of her acting, once she actually becomes the chair she largely just lays there for the vast majority of the film.  Camille is described by the narrator (Melanie Griffith) as a “secure and satisfied” person.  Yet, as she goes to lunch each week with her friends (played by Samantha Mathis and Robin Tunney) she finds herself wanting to be free of their drama.  She wants a get-together with friends who are full of ideas, and all she gets is crisis after crisis.

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When they go shopping after lunch one day, somewhere they seemingly always go but never buy, Camille falls deeply enamoured with a chair.  She’s jealous of its beauty and its usefulness.  The chair can sit there silently and still be seen and appreciated.  And in a strange way, her soul manages to make its way into the chair.  The chair eventually is sold and ends up in the home of Olivier (Mamoudou Athie) who is gifted the chair by his ex-girlfriend.  It is one of the only real possessions he has, and he needs it as much as Camille feels valuable being the chair.

Meanwhile, Camille’s body is at her apartment (seemingly not eating/drinking or doing any such life-sustaining thing but realism is not in this film’s operating manual) and people just talk at her.  Her mother (Betty Buckley) comes in and comments on how she’s become such a good listener.  Her friends come by and encourage her to drink some wine with them.  But she is just a soulless body now, no more than a puppet for their own uses.

This is one film from Sundance that will be divisive for audiences.  I feel like you either jive with Kramer’s unique style of filmmaking or you do not.  By Design is more like experimental theatre that, for me anyway, never quite translates onto the big screen. There is interpretive dance, performance art, and even a slight foray into tap dance by Clifton Collins Jr. who also delivers an odd soliloquy of sorts during his cameo.

Instead of full cohesion, By Design feels like a lot of vignettes put together, with a chair being the one thread between them.  (As an aside, in the post-screening Q&A, they noted the chair used in the film was an antique refurbished latrine and that seemed to strangely fit).   Thank goodness for the narration guiding the audience to make at least a little sense of things.  There are a few moments in the film where the actors ask, “Who cares?” and I found myself asking the same thing as time went on.

That’s not to say that By Design doesn’t have good ideas.  The way Camille feels more highly regarded as this modest-looking chair, despite the fact everyone feels it’s the most beautiful chair in the world, is poignant and an interesting way to explore how women view their own importance and value.  Yet despite some interesting insights (and might I say some brilliant costume design from Sophie Hardeman), you might just say this movie didn’t ‘sit’ well with me.

By Design premiered January 23, 2025 at the Sundance Film Festival.  You can find more information about the film at Sundance.org

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