Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Amanda Kramer
Starring: Juliette Lewis, Udo Kier, Melanie Griffith, Mamoudou Athie, Robin Tunney, Samantha Mathis, Alisa Torres, Betty Buckley, Clifton Collins, Jr.
The thing about camp, as a critical principle, is that everything has the potential for aesthetic meaning; that with the correct perspective, and an imagination which leans towards the fabulous, there is an endless potential for wonder in this sordidly short life. As Sontag (bloody Sontag) remarked, "what was banal can become fantastic," an assumption evident in the opening of Amanda Kramer's By Design (amazing Wikipedia plot summary: "A woman swaps bodies with a chair"), wherein three women coo over a visually pleasing chair in the sort of high end furniture store cum gallery where they should offer an espresso with a lemon twist. In amongst more elaborate items of furnishings, the chair fits more suitably within the minimalist remit of Jasper Morrison than, say, the elaboration of Marcel Wanders. Shaped from maple wood, the chair's thin arms and hard back express sleek functionality with devastating style. I'm sitting on a chair now, maybe you are too as you read these very words. Chairs exist: why shouldn't they be beautiful? Our heroine Camille (actual Juliette Lewis) certainly thinks so; she envies the chair's beauty and usefulness, its utilitarian purpose, a whimsical voiceover informs us (actual Melanie Griffith, her fluttery tone lending the narration a fable-like feel). Camille just "wants it, very much."
The arch sensibility of By Design is established via opening credits which blend titles with the tasteful design of an Oliver Bonas catalogue, and is consolidated as we see the trio brunch on mimosas and strawberries (brunch being the most camp of mealtimes). Sophie Hardeman's wonderful costumes of thick fabrics are lovingly captured by Patrick Meade Jones's lens in a to die for mise-en-scene (this is the sort of film which has one raking imdb for the names of the art director and production designer: Grace Surnow and Angélica Vasquez). That the women are played by three nineties icons, made up by Robin Tunney and Samantha Mathis, adds a meta level of significance (such a thrill to see these teen starlets on screen again as beautiful women), aided by the naturally ironic mien of Juliette Lewis, who is a woman who perhaps came out of the womb screaming in inverted commas. The hair (ultimate camp signifier) is never boring, either, with JL's coiled into retro bulky curls and Tunney's barnet an amazing shag: it is the living end. With its static scenes and careful lighting (the film has the pleasingly clean sheen and shadow of eighties movies, the boom era of body swap movies) in a motion of form mimicking subject, By Design presents as an art installation piece where surface and structure is both method and meaning.
And the thing about conceptual art is that once you've parsed what the piece is trying to say and corresponded those ideologies with your own negotiated understandings via a wry nod and a chin stroke, you're sort of done (yeah, it's an unmade bed, get loads of sex do you, aye?, etc). It is both its advantage (sharing of ideas, confronting paradigms) and its intentional limit. By Design sets out its philosophical stall early, with an absurdist dream sequence of Camille dancing about, lovingly caressing and sitting with purpose on the seat of her desire (all carried off with Lewis' deadpan charisma). Kramer observes that we place ridiculous stock in material goods, willingly partaking in a consumerist society (hold the front page, etc). The film will later wonder, "what do the things we love give back to us?," a rather glib aphorism which sits uneasily among the hyperreal, objectified mise-en-scene. In a having its chair and sitting on it dynamic, By Design is itself a visual curio which sets out to satirise the concept of the object d'art.
When Camille initially body swaps with the chair in a moment of black comic wonder, the film reaches an early apotheosis. This is partially because Lewis is rendered inert while Camille's physical body is bedridden, but also because, with apologies to Magritte, a chair is, well, a chair (expect when it’s Curry Barker's The Chair: no backlash here). There's only so much you can do with it. The film descends into a series of sketches, one of which features an always welcome Clifton Collins Jr. who turns up in a pseudo-rapey scene with his character ("Jacob the Stalker") stealing Camille's comatose body... The cheek-probing tongue of By Design (a common mistake is the presumption that bad taste equates to camp), is ill equipped to articulate the pervy kitsch of such sequences. Back to the required chair itself, there is no doubt that the initial beauty of the presentation is beguiling, but I reckon sitting in it for more than half an hour would get to be uncomfortable. Perhaps working better as a short, By Design outstays its welcome, becoming the antithesis of camp itself, affecting, in the words of Sontag, a "species of frustration."
By Design is in UK cinemas from October 16th.
