Amanda Kramer’s By Design unmistakably fits the filmmaker’s chicly eclectic canon. Past titles like Give Me Pity! and Please Baby Please challenge convention by breaking through the constructs of today’s Hollywood expectations. By Design is, as titled, designed to operate outside traditional filmmaking norms. It’s a literal interpretation and commentary on female objectification about a rut-stuck protagonist whose soul inhabits a standard-definition chair. Kramer plays with surreal department store catalog visuals and body-swap quirkiness, leaning heavily on interpretive dance to convey meaning. There’s nothing like it, but with such extravagant boldness comes risks, and they don’t always pay off.
Juliette Lewis stars as Camille, a silently suffering woman stuck in her monotonous routine. Spying on neighbors, lunch with her gal pals, and shopping trips without purchases. Then, one day, Camille spies the most “stunning” chair — but it’s sold. In a fit of agony, while caressing the transfixing wooden furniture, Camille wishes to become the chair, and poof! She’s now useful, appreciated, and needed by her new owner, the heartbroken private pianist Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). Meanwhile, Camille’s closest friends Irene (Robin Tunney) and Lisa (Samantha Mathis) are stuck with her now dead-weight husk, and so begins their self-serving attempts to cure Camille.
Juliette Lewis Gets a New Lease on Life as a Chair ‘By Design’

By Design is a film that detests conversation with mixed results. Camille’s lunch dates with Irene and Lisa are a competition between acquaintances who only talk to hear themselves — which doesn’t change when her body goes limp. When Clifton Collins Jr. later interrupts as a tap-dancing stalker, he’s unable to harm the non-responsive Camille because she’s not resisting or crying for help. Any character who interacts with Lewis’ Weekend At Bernie’s impression fills the void with incessant chatter, which can be comical as Irene comes to personal epiphanies with mute Camille’s ”help,” but also revealing as her mother Cynthia (​​Betty Buckley) admits she prefers Camille’s non-resistant state. Camille has always been a seat for others to use and while that sentiment stays prominent, the continued talk-over mode becomes less entertainable the more continuity fractures.
As By Design manipulates silence, Kramer focuses on fever-dream choreography to sell escalating turmoil. People cannot say what they mean, so dialogue fades into interludes where characters perform empty-chair lapdances, with both Lewis and Athie taking turns writhing on smoothed seats and curved armrests. It’s preposterous romantic pulp, a confounding representation of forbidden love, but these rightfully intriguing breaks into footwork overpower the film’s more mundane ruminations. Athie particularly injects immense passion as his lips kiss “Chair Camille,” yet there’s a sluggishness to the off-key spoken scenes as we try to accept why men and women desire this chair like it casts a spell.

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That’s the struggle of By Design. Expressive body motions flow like high art, while outlying obscurity reads rigid. Where Give Me Pity! connects as a variety show template, By Design plays like a series of scolding vignettes about creating meaningful existences. Kramer keeps hilarious attention to detail, whether sneaky alleyway conversations are interrupted by vagrant behavior or there’s an askew symmetry to room decor — but there’s also a slavish degree of oddball pronunciations. Everything is intentional, but that doesn’t stave off a redundancy of idiosyncratic appeal. Camille’s out-of-body, handcrafted journey requires injections of life because not every gag lands.
‘By Design’ Doesn’t Get Its Intent Across

Image by Jovelle Tamayo via Sundance Institute

Athie leans into soap opera earnestness that can be funny, but more importantly somber as a yearning Olivier. His musician relives a nightmare surrounded by club patrons barking requests with skillful revulsion, as swinger-dressed dancers convulse and intertwine while his face reads pure terror. Udo Kier pops in as an extravagant European furniture craftsman (“Aldo Fabbri”), so expertly cast. But actors like Collins Jr. overstay their welcome by virtue of material, as his stalker’s failed fire escape escapes drone on. This is why I mentioned risks above: when By Design whiffs, it’s crickets. Lewis’ performance can be so wacky and tragic, conveying the heartbreak of living a life wrongfully undesired, yet plenty weighs down the 90-ish minute art installation. Kramer doesn’t operate by commercial terms, which is not the film’s point, but free-wheeling originality can be cumbersome based on chosen storytelling methods.
It’s a conundrum because By Design holds a volatile individualistic power at its core. Lewis shines in bites where Melanie Griffith’s narration exposes Camille’s wounded core, or she tries to merge with the much-adored chair. There’s a rebelliousness about Kramer’s act of cinematic protest that is beguiling for a spell but also can be a chore. The purposeful stage-play quality of By Design is never abstruse, but perhaps that’s part of the frustration. What’s clearly conveyed by introductory glimpses of Camille’s disillusion is replayed over and over, layering an unfortunate monotony atop otherwise fearless approaches to displaying sexist or societal issues.
Frankly, By Design will be praised and reviled as intended. Amanda Kramer isn’t here for our approval. Technical elements are all polished, from Patrick Meade Jones’ Ikea-sexy cinematography to Giulio Carmassi and Bryan Scary’s jazzy and somewhat whispering score. The problem is the film’s sustainability and the increasing heft of Kramer’s stylistic indulgence. There’s a finesse to appreciate, and those entranced by Camille’s reverse anthropomorphic feminist themes will be in heaven, but sharp craftsmanship is gatekept behind the film’s inability to cohesively package its overall ambitions.
By Design premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

By Design

By Design has substance but the style can keep viewers from fully investing.

Release Date

January 23, 2025

Runtime

92 minutes

Director

Amanda Kramer

Writers

Amanda Kramer

Pros & Cons

Undeniably unique and artistic.
Amanda Kramer finds new ways to confront objectification issues.
Juliette Lewis and Mamoudou Athie lose themselves to the seduction of a chair.

The film’s methods can sometimes be overbearing and the thrill of surrealist storytelling fades.
When a scene doesn?t work, it drags hard.