A lonely woman swaps bodies with an armchair in “By Design,” a flimsy specialty item from the filmmaker Amanda Kramer. It is a curious cinematic exercise, a not-quite narrative excursion into middle-aged women’s yearning that doubles, at times, as benign body horror — if the horror was architectural and the body was bentwood.
We meet Camille (Juliette Lewis) in her typical routine: a barbed lunch with her deliciously corrosive gal pals, Lisa (Samantha Mathis) and Irene (Robin Tunney). Afterward, the women go shopping in a capacious showroom, where Camille lays eyes on the chair of her dreams: a wooden “stunner” with curved arms whose utility and haptic quality she comes to envy, and then covet.
She can’t swing the price, but in an unexplained twist of fate, Camille’s soul comes to inhabit the chair, leaving her body sprawled, unmoving, for her friends to haul around and stroke pityingly.
Needless to say, “By Design,” narrated by Melanie Griffith, is a tale of female objectification literalized — but not a morality tale, nor a cautionary one. It’s more of a joke. In a world devoted to beauty standards, here’s a woman who doesn’t care about becoming younger, prettier or thinner. She wants to be admired for being inanimate.
This central idea is muddled by an excess of seemingly random vignettes, many incorporating crazed women and dance choreography. Kramer has constructed an ironically detached artifact that invites questions about ownership and image and then bats them away, making it a frustrating experience with an intriguing veneer.
By Design Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters.
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