Offering a twist on the body-swap genre, Amanda Kramer’s Sundance Next entry By Design feels, at first glance, more suited to the stage or gallery than cinema. It’s a story about luxury, envy, and longing with a dry tone that requires patience but doesn’t quite deliver a rewarding experience beyond the metaphor it continues returning to: resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. For the characters there is a certain fear of missing out and becoming simply another piece of furniture. When the narrator (Melanie Griffith) can no longer adequately provide the right expository information, the film switches to dance.
Juliette Lewis stars as Camile, a broke woman who lunches with pals Lisa (Samantha Mathis) and Irene (Robin Tunney) before going shopping at an exclusive furniture store that sells one-off chairs. Camile finds herself fixated on a chair that may or may not be for sale and pledges to get her finances in order before returning in the morning. But she’s too late: Martha (Alisa Torres) gifts the chair to her ex-boyfriend Oliver (Mamoudou Athie), a broke pianist who finds himself taking random gigs despite, our narrator tells us early on, the fact that “he doesn’t know how to make money” and “he’ll teach himself to buy when it matters what’s on sale.”
As a send-up of tasteless luxury, By Design channels a vapid fashion ad. I was reminded of Bulgari’s Unexpected Wonders, the Paolo Sorrentino-directed “film” ad featuring Zendaya and Anne Hathaway that played before screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival (and later came back to haunt me while seeing a movie at iPic). Playing with the strands of high-fashion ads, the film is at times effective as a surreal comedy about form over function as Camile fantasizes and ultimately becomes the chair that’s the subject of her and Oliver’s desire. Not since the Duplass Brothers’ debut feature The Puffy Chair has such furniture been granted such importance onscreen.
The dry voiceover provided by Griffith, the dialogue in which characters disinterestedly quiz each other, and the flat-by-design performances suggest we’re in a two-hour fashion ad or gallery installation. Perhaps that might have been the best form for the film to take, veering from what feels like branded content for an aspirational brand. The characters here are both depressed and bougie, clinging to form over function. As NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway says, “Everything eventually becomes Hermès or Walmart,” and in the process By Design awkwardly reduces Camile to a commodity that aspires to be a well-crafted luxury good.
Convoluted metaphors aside, By Design is both challenging and ambitious in its use of sparse physical and sound design. The frames are often empty, representing reality rather than replicating, almost as if this could have been a performance presented in a black box theater. At best it’s an hypnotic experiment, even if it appears to be situated in its own bubble of individuals aspiring to and copying affluence. Inspired by objectification, By Design, by design, tests the patience of viewers via Kramer’s precise direction and controlled mise-en-scène, designed by Grace Surnow and photographed by Patrick Meade Jones––unfortunately, the challenge never feels rewarding. Perhaps that’s the point: aspirational luxury sells the sizzle, not the steak.
By Design premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.