Camille (Juliette Lewis) enters a home décor store and becomes obsessed with a chair. Soon after, she swaps bodies with it and quickly realizes that everyone around her prefers this version of herself. Amanda Kramer’s film, which premiered at Sundance and is narrated by Melanie Griffith, is a dramedy with a strong physical component, repeatedly showing its protagonist trapped in space, at the mercy of her surroundings. It is impossible not to read it as a satirical commentary on the objectification of women.
This film is a highly idiosyncratic experience. Amanda Kramer depicts a hyper, mega-stylised world to tell a story of absolute fetishisation: someone who desires to possess an object with every fibre of their being and, later, desires to become that object with every fibre of their being. Kramer crafts everything with a rigorous aesthetic vision and a biting, dry sense of humour that gets under the viewer’s skin. Camille’s body, whose essence (soul?) is transferred to a chair, is as present in her friends’ lives as ever, and her relationship with her own mother is better than ever. It’s not just that the writer-director manages to combine elements of literature, cinema and performance art to satirise common social behaviours for their absurdity; she also reveals the emptiness and meaninglessness in her characters’ lives. By Design is a rebellion against the objectification of women, but it is also more than that: it takes the intense desire to be desired to its ultimate conclusion, to the point where one allows oneself to be used.
Ana Cabral Martins
