‘By Design’ Review: A Woman Switches Bodies with Her Favorite Chair in a Dance-Filled Exploration of Our Need to Possess

“Who appreciates Camille as much as they do a chair? She’s never been able to just sit there silently and still be loved?”

Those words, spoken by an invisible narrator (Melanie Lynskey) at the beginning of “By Design” synthesize the premise of Amanda Kramer‘s latest work, a gore-free piece of body horror that seeks to explore female objectification in the most literal possible terms. Using abstract dance and painful silences to illustrate the contrasting experiences of a woman and an inanimate chair who switch bodies, the film unfolds like a thoughtful nightmare told through the distinct gaze that made Kramer’s films like “Please Baby Please” and “Ladyworld” unforgettable. The film often feels as impossible to definitively grasp as the coveted furniture that it follows — but whether that’s a feature or a bug lies in the eye of the beholder.

When we meet Camille (Juliette Lewis), she’s trapped in a life of soul-crushing monotony that appears benign from the outside. While she yearns for some kind of intellectual stimulation, she spends her days going to dull lunches with her “friends” Lisa (Samantha Lewis) and Irene (Robin Tunney), who exclusively speak in pleasantries that drip with passive aggression. Kramer scripts and shoots their conversations with a deliberate stiffness, stylizing the sequences of female intrasexual competition to the point where you couldn’t possibly be deluded into believing the kind words that leave their mouths. Each humblebrag-filled lunch is followed by an afternoon shopping trip, where the three women admire furniture that they’re quick to point out the others could never afford.

One such trip becomes a life-altering event when Camille sees a chair that changes her entire worldview. Whether she’s genuinely moved by the beauty of its design or simply looking for an excuse to blow up her own routine is irrelevant. She decides that she simply must have it. She spends the evening getting her meager finances in order and talking herself into making a purchase she can’t really afford, and shows up the moment the shop opens the next day to buy it — only to find that a mysterious other customer has already beaten her to it. In a moment of desperation, she wishes that she could become the chair, thinking that something so beautiful must have a more comfortable life she does.

She gets her wish, and soon finds herself being shipped off to an eccentric musician named Olivier (Mamoudou Athie). A pianist who sustains himself by playing at private parties for groups of six people or less in strange rooms that feel ripped from a Lynchian nightmare, he has never been one for possessions. His bachelor pad feels ripped straight from /r/malelivingspace, with little more than a keyboard, a mattress, and a couple of dumbbells adorning the ground. At last, this chair feels like something beautiful he can truly own. With a world of collectors trying to acquire it from him, his minimalism evaporates as protecting his worldly attachment to it becomes his sole focus.

The rest of the film unfolds in increasingly nonverbal terms, as the chair containing Camille’s soul has no mouth with which to express its thoughts and her body with the mind of a chair has no such thoughts to express. Kramer relies heavily on interpretive dance and classical music cues to convey emotions, crafting an immersive world that’s beautiful on the surface but devoid of any authentic warmth. “By Design” becomes an exploration of ways that Camille and the chair’s lives change and the ways they remain the same.

Despite Camille being reduced to an inanimate object that can do little more than sit with a blank look in her eyes, her conversations with her overbearing mother don’t change that much. She could hardly get a word in between her mom’s stories and grievances before she had the mind of a chair — and if anything, the matriarch is just grateful to have even fewer interruptions to endure. Her conversations with Lisa and Irene are equally banal. While the two friends at least notice that she’s changed, they turn the occasion into an opportunity to compete to see who can appear to do more to help her without actually doing anything at all.

Kramer deliberately chooses the broadest possible metaphors, resulting in a film that is more interested in using a hammer to bluntly shape the outline of the female experience than painting its finest details with a subtle brush. But its biggest ideas — like the way that society seemingly doesn’t care when a woman completely loses her ability to speak; or the contradiction between a woman who craves intellectual stimulation yet casts a wish to be desired and possessed for her looks alone — are certainly worthy of exploration in her capable hands. Visually unmistakable and fearlessly abstract, “By Design” stands out as a key entry in an increasingly essential filmography. It won’t be for everyone, but that’s by design.

Grade: B

“By Design” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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