‘By Design’ Review – A Woman Finds Fulfillment As A Chair In Wonderfully Weird Body Swap Tale [Sundance 2025]

What is it that you desire and covet? Outside of genuine contentment, the odds are it is something material, be it money, clothes, iPhones, etc, but what makes you want it so badly? Amanda Kramer’s wonderfully weird body swap tale, By Design, asks you to subvert your own expectations of what you’ve been taught about the same old morality tale of envy. Maybe the grass is actually greener on the other side this time.

By Design has a pretty loose plot. If the viewer begins the film thinking that there’s going to be a direct path from point A to point B, they would be mistaken. Kramer challenges the audience to think differently about desire, desperation, coveting objects, and even how we project onto things and people. A woman named Camille, played by Juliette Lewis, lives a small and simple life. Her apartment is rather bare and filled with only things she needs. She never really wants much, or at least that’s what she tells herself. One of her most extravagant expenses is weekly brunch with her two friends, Lisa (Samantha Mathis) and Irene (Robin Tunney), which she spends listening to them talk about their lives and mostly enjoys. 

While accompanying her friends into a furniture store to browse, Camille spots a chair that she wants more than anything she has ever wanted in her whole life. It is one of a kind and specially designed. She believes it to be beautiful and perfect and soon even finds herself envious of the chair. Lisa and Irene agree that it is exquisite, but Camille can’t afford it. This sends her into an almost existential crisis of worry and longing, thinking, correctly, that someone will buy the chair before she can come up with the money to buy it herself. When she goes back to the store the next day, she finds a “sold” tag on the chair. 

Camille is heartbroken and becomes so despondent and desperate that she begins wishing fervently while hugging the chair that she could be this chair instead of herself. If she could just know how it would feel to be so beautiful and desired as this chair is, then she would be happy. Her wish is granted, and her soul enters the chair while the chair’s “soul”, consciousness, whatever you want to call it enters Camille’s body. The chair, now Camille, is taken to her new home where the owner, Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), becomes immediately consumed and obsessed with the chair just like almost everyone else who has laid eyes on it. The movie then follows both Camille’s body’s life and Camille’s life as the chair.

If you’ve seen any body swap movie that has been made in the entire history of cinema, you already know that by the end you’ll see the two main characters desperately wishing to return to their own bodies and seeing them filled with relief when they finally do. All of these characters usually learn the same lesson that is in every body swap movie: the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Your life is actually pretty good and maybe you do actually miss and love your spouse, but in By Design, while the viewer may find themselves leaning toward that desire to see Camille return to her own body, they may be shocked to see that she isn’t feeling the same way they are.

You would think that if a woman body swapped with a chair someone would notice, right? Maybe don’t hold your breath. In a funny, albeit, sad scene, Camille’s mother visits Camille’s body at her apartment. Her mother spends the entire visit talking at her empty shell and going through her stuff, seeming absolutely pleased to finally be listened to and to have access to Camille in a way she probably hasn’t had since her daughter was a child. Camille’s body is left feeling and thinking that as a chair she is a more suitable and better daughter. 

The idea that women’s bodies are objects of desire to own and to be commodified is floating just on the surface of the story. It may be corny to bring up metaphors, but the chair seems like an obvious stand-in for a woman in our society. Camille and the chair appear interchangeable not only in the story itself, but also to the characters within it. She is well-liked as the chair because she is seen but not heard, useful, and beautiful to look at. This is a chair that was designed by a man to be sold and bought, which also begs the question: are women only valuable after being shaped and designed by men? Camille doesn’t see herself as beautiful or even useful in her previous life, and it’s only after she is the chair that she feels truly beheld and cherished for the first time by a man. Everyone fawns over how gorgeous she is. She is finally something to be coveted, but the fact that she is only able to experience all of this after she is fashioned into what can be seen as a patriarchal gender role and society’s (men’s) idea of proper femininity and beauty is pretty bleak but very incisive. 

All of these themes and ideas are encapsulated within a dark, offbeat humor that is reminiscent of a 90s indie dark comedy. The production design is more minimalistic, using sets and lighting that can sometimes feel like you’re watching a play. The performances are sincere and subtle but could easily tip over into camp without the deft writing and directing of Amanda Kramer to guide them. 

The sometimes bizarre energy that By Design carries may not be as accessible to everyone. Occasionally scenes can overstay their welcome, but this is a film worth watching. It may surprise audiences with just how much it has to say about leading lives of quiet desperation, women’s bodies, and how we seek to possess the things we long for and are jealous of as status symbols. Amanda Kramer, who has made other odd and dark, satirical films in the past, has crafted a strange yet tragically funny film, and it is clear that she understands just how silly human nature and our made-up rules can often be. 

By Design had its World Premiere in the NEXT section of the 2025 Sundance film Festival.

Director: Amanda Kramer

Writer: Amanda Kramer

Rated: NR

Runtime: 92m