Juliette Lewis Becomes a Chair—Yes, Seriously—in Bonkers Sundance Indie

PARK CITY, Utah—The Sundance Film Festival is known for off-kilter quirkiness, and By Design sends this year’s weirdness quotient through the roof.

An insistently eccentric indie that’s at once indebted to Paul Morrissey and Peter Strickland and totally, doggedly, its own thing, writer/director Amanda Kramer’s latest tells the tale of a single woman who becomes far happier after transforming into a chair. Yes, you read that right, and no, it makes no more sense in practice than it does in theory, but those with a hankering for willfully pretentious absurdity may find this festival entry right up their alley.

Camille (Juliette Lewis) is an unusual woman whom the film’s narrator (Melanie Griffith, no less) claims is a “sure and satisfied person.” One has to take her word for it, since the individual on display is awkward and uncomfortable, and whose favorite motto is “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Camille’s friends Irene (Robin Tunney) and Lisa (Samantha Mathis) don’t know what that means, but then, they’re a chatty duo who mostly talk over, around, and through Camille during their regular lunches together. Though she wishes these get-togethers were “a salon of ideas” that would stimulate her intellectually and socially, Camille finds them to be underwhelming—something she also feels about her solitary life at home.

Following one of their lunches, Camille, Irene, and Lisa go shopping at a furniture store that looks like a barren art gallery decorated with different chairs. After critiquing a wide variety of these pieces of furniture, Camille’s eye is caught by a rather plain wooden chair that Griffith’s voiceover declares is “the stunner” and which Camille instinctively envies for its beauty and usefulness.

Camille is outright jealous of this item, since unlike her, it deserves praise and is so eye-catching that it can’t be ignored and must be deeply, passionately considered. Irene and Lisa remind their friend that they never buy anything during these outings. Yet she’s so taken with it—“An object of desire. How simple. How essential,” intones Griffith—that she informs the saleswoman she’ll return the next day to complete her purchase.

Alas, when she arrives, she discovers that it’s been sold to a stranger named Marta (Alisa Torres). Profoundly upset by this turn of events, Camille begs the clerk to let her touch it one last time, after which she wishes that she could become the chair. This plea is answered by a quartet of lingerie-clad women who gyrate about her and on chairs like bonkers Chicago rejects as Camille’s soul enters the designer seat and her now-empty body flops to the floor.

The chair is wrapped in twine and picked up by Marta, who gifts it to her ex-boyfriend Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), a part-time piano player who’s still smarting over Marta dumping him and taking all their possessions. Olivier is entranced by it, compelled to strip down to his yellow tank top and blue boxers to undress it as sensual music, dreamy fades, and diagonal shadows (created by slatted blinds) conjure a romantic mood. As he falls madly in love, he wonders, “How many people sat in your lap last night?”, and coos, “We’re just two seats, aren’t we?”

Camille is equally thrilled by her new form, taking pleasure from the sensation of having herself crushed by Olivier’s full weight (“This is the best part”). Meanwhile, her inert body lies around her house and is visited by her mother (Betty Buckley), who wears a giant bow on her head and forces her daughter to try on shoes. Lisa and Irene also stop by to blab on and on while Camille stares blankly at them. This Camille enjoys her new stress-free life of being “totally unavailable.” Thus, she’s unperturbed when a stalker (Clifton Collins Jr.) breaks into her place, ties her up, and takes her onto the fire escape to sexually assault her, only to tap-dance about, get weepy about his bodybuilder girlfriend, and fall over the railing to his death.

This is part and parcel of the film’s insufferable performance-art ridiculousness, which further manifests itself during a dinner party where Olivier is badgered by four women and their male host (who all yearn to sit in Olivier’s chair), and in a late warehouse encounter between Marta, Irene, Lisa, and a comatose Camille that’s interrupted by a random woman screaming at an upstairs window, crawling on the ground, and being sat upon (like, yes, a chair) by the four lingerie spirits.

By Design is a work of almost staggering avant-garde affectation, marrying its illogical narrative events to transparent themes about loneliness, alienation, connection, and the value of being seen and appreciated. It’s simultaneously opaque and obvious, and its cast’s turns are stilted and over-the-top, led by Lewis as a literal and figurative empty shell and Athie as an oddball with an unhealthy longing for communion.

By Design’s tone never wavers, but tolerance for its nonsense quickly wears thin. Given the proceedings’ peculiarity, it’s fitting that Udo Kier eventually shows up as the chair’s designer, Aldo Fabbri. Initially confused and repulsed by his handiwork, Aldo determines that his displeasure is the result of the chair containing Camille’s soul, at which point he screams “You are blue!” and attempts to confiscate the item from Olivier, albeit to no avail. Later, Camille is transported to Olivier’s place to face her inanimate four-legged counterpart, instigating a mind-body reversion that doesn’t seem to satisfy either her or Olivier. Nonetheless, Griffith intones that, “In dreams she feels like furniture. An interior, designed,” and if that last line makes you want to groan, it’s no worse than most of the twaddle dispensed by this experimental venture.

Lewis’s arrhythmic performance is certainly unique, and her co-stars are as off-putting as writer/director Kramer intends them to be, but By Design’s abstraction overload is wearisome, especially since it’s rarely subtle. Camille longs to be special, to be wanted, and to be perfect, and Olivier is desperate for the intense emotional bond he felt with Marta. Yet no matter how many times the film suggests or articulates these ideas, they remain intellectual concepts to be understood more than felt—and prove, like the rest of this affair, as lifeless as its hollow protagonist.