Director Amanda Kramer’s witty black comedy examines the role of identity and feeling alone in a crowd in this genre comedy where a woman swaps her body with the form of a designer chair.
BY DESIGN (2026)
★★★ OF ★★★★★ stars
It’s not a leap to say that exploring a woman’s identity and autonomy in a changing world is a topic of heavy interest in genre films currently. From Elizabeth Sparkle becoming convinced her actions as Sue in THE SUBSTANCE means she is a completely different person to her ultimate detriment. Autonomy and the agency you can pursue due to your form, looks or standing is a topic ripe for mining in genre. Here, director Amanda Kramer gives us a really unique take on that in BY DESIGN, which opens in theaters here in Phoenix on February 13th. Juliette Lewis plays Camille, part of a group of sort of shallow friends whose friendship is defined by history and routine and not much of an inner life. Think the group of Carrie Coon’s friends in the latest season of White Lotus. These are ladies who lunch, but don’t know much about each other beyond gossip and window shopping. One days, Camille and her friends, played by stalwart 90’s icons Robin Tunney and Samantha Mathis, go shopping for a chair and Camille sees a designer chair, one she adores and feels is a rich topic of conversation and envy; everything Camille feels she isn’t – this chair is. So Camille, despite being on a fixed income, resolves to buy it. Only for her to come back and see the chair has been bought – not by her friend to spite her, but a starnger. She cries and longs to touch it and she casts a wish, hoping to be the chair. And, somehow, Camille becomes the chair and the chair becomes Camille’s body. The thing that is fascinating then in BY DESIGN is how much the exchange works for both. Camille’s human body, now immobile and nonspeaking, is treated with more attention by her friends. Camille’s mother prefers the chair wearing her daughter’s form to her real daughter. A would be kidnapper played by Clifton Collins Jr. is foiled in her attempt to assault Camille’s body and accidentally offs himself, making everyone see the chair that everyone thinks is Camille as a heroine against sexual assault.
Meanwhile, the chair that is Camille is adored by her new owner, Olivier, played by Mamoudou Athie (Kinds of Kindness, Archive 81). He loves the chair and Camille’s soul wonders if he loves the chair because it is her. He feels taken aback when friends want to sit on it and he wants to know more and more about his unique chair, even calling the chair’s creator, played by Udo Kier in one of his final roles, who knows sees the chair as tainted and demands it be returned to him. Along with these shenanigans, Camille’s friends decide to reward the heroid would-be Camille by buying her the chair she dreamed of and maybe unearting a return of consciousness that perhaps neither truly desire.
BY DESIGN feels something like the sort of film that fans of Yorgos Lanthimos, David Lynch or Spike Jonze would adore. It has its own unique aesthetic, similar to the early work of Lanthimos with a theatrical sort of aesthetic and performance, but it works for this story, which feels dreamlike and almost like a stage play. It’s fascinating how it sort of critiques the types of attitude women get for speaking their mind or in this case not against the view of how a woman is seen by a jealous suitor, as an object. Neither version of Camille talks, the people around them divine what they think she needs without noticing she doesn’t respond or lisdten or seeing the silence as a form of talking that reflects them. Camille is an object in both forms, a mirror to the character acting against her, which is frightening becvause this is often how we see and treat women in society. Even the film’s narrator, Melanie Griffth, feels like a choice echoing this sentiment with her role in Working Girl where perception of a woman;s role in society is taken as fact.
BY DESIGN is a movie that may not speak to everyone, but its unique and says something interesting, both about society and genre as a sort of body horror where what we desire is taking by other’s need to make themselves known.
BY DESIGN opens at AMC Ahwatukee on February 13th