The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021)

Directed by Will Sharpe. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Adeel Akhtar, Phoebe Nicholls, Hayley Squires, Jamie Demetriou, Aimee Lou Wood, Stacy Martin, Sharon Rooney, (voice) Olivia Colman. [PG-13]

Cumberbatch tackles another well-known and socially-abnormal figure of English historical/literary lore as a relatable outsider draped in a cloak of mannered eccentricities. Here, he’s Louis Wain, the illustrator who rose to prominence in Victorian England with his striking drawings of cats, many of them anthropomorphic and parodic in nature. But despite the capricious early scenes, his unconventional romance across class boundaries with governess Emily Richardson (Foy), and the playfulness of the subject’s art, heartbreak and the insidious creep of madness take over in the later chapters of his life, which are presented as episodes reached by frustrating chronological lunges that omit a lot of pertinent information and context. Amid all the beautiful photography and kitty kitsch is a dispiriting descent into woe, but its bristles become feathers in director Sharpe’s hands, brightened with a hopeful and dreamlike whimsy that belies the toll of such tragedies on Wain’s deteriorating sanity. But rather than illuminate, Sharpe chooses to fluctuate, using quirkiness as a crutch and struggling to avoid bathos, all without the courage of heedless juxtaposition as a storytelling device. Cats are cute, though, so it always has that going for it. Taika Waititi and Nick Cave cameo as Max Kase and H. G. Wells, respectively; Colman narrates.

57/100