Will Sharpe's "THE ELECTRICAL LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN"

Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

It’s tempting to say that the look and feel of this film is as quirky as Louis Wain, the Edwardian English cat artist it portrays.

Production wise the period details of 19th and early 20th Century England are completely enveloping starting with the amazingly realistic interiors that figure prominently throughout the film. Music is wonderfully evocative both of the times and of the fragile mental state of the main character portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch.

It is Cumberbatch’s performance that propels this film. We watch his character evolve from naive to clever to eccentric and finally to mentally unstable. Connecting all events and characters is the real life artist Louis Wain’s focus on creating wildly popular cat paintings that are often credited as the foundation for the popularity of domestic cats in today’s world.

I’m not a cat person myself but the manner in which cats, paintings, and Wain’s personal relationships and eventual schizophrenia are intertwined is unusually and magically portrayed.

One of the most impressive features of this film is how it avoids the saccharine pitfalls of comparable films that portray psychologically troubled individuals. This is due partly to Cumberbatch’s masterful performance and partly to director Sharpe’s skillful rendering of Wain’s increasingly fragile mental state as reflected in occasionally surreal visual effects and to incorporation of Wain’s increasingly psychedelic cat paintings.

Don’t watch this film expecting a typical “feel good” flick about a troubled artist that ends with an artificial happy ending. Do watch it with the expectation that the life of an unusual artist will be creatively and uniquely portrayed.

Recommended.

Review copyright (c) 2022 by Dennis D. McDonald