If you could open my head like a cookie jar, there’s a good chance that the logline for Amanda Kramer’s stunning new film, “By Design” — “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as the chair” — would pop out like a can of worms. Even before I first saw the film during last year’s Sundance Film Festival, this one-line elevator pitch was taking up all the space in my prefrontal cortex. Like all good jokes, it’s both funny and achingly relatable, with a punchline that sticks to the ribs. But this one-line synopsis also succinctly captures the film’s complexities, humor, darkness and honesty. It’s amazing how much a handful of perfectly chosen words can make us feel, and how much beauty there can be in something as simple as a sentence.
But, then again, “By Design” is all about the little details — and, more specifically, how much those details matter versus how much we obsess over them. In Kramer’s film, Juliette Lewis plays Camille, an absurdly chic yet financially strapped woman preoccupied with keeping up appearances for no reason other than that it’s what’s expected of her. She neglects groceries in favor of spending money on cigarettes and lunch with her two best friends, Irene (Robin Tunney) and Lisa (Samantha Mathis), saving just enough for a small, simple life with no room for additional frivolity. That becomes a problem when, after one of their weekly lunches, the three friends stroll around a furniture store, where Camille is entranced by a gorgeous chair she can’t possibly afford. Instantly, Camille is overcome with desire, as well as a more surprising, complicated feeling: jealousy.
