111 min | PG-13 | October 22, 2021 | Amazon Studios
Louis Wain draws cats for a living and chases electricity in his head. He marries the governess, mourns the love of his life, and loses his grip on reality one psychedelic feline at a time. Will Sharpe makes the madness beautiful and the biopic ordinary.
Louis Wain is a Victorian illustrator who draws cats and believes electricity holds the secret of the universe. He supports a houseful of sisters, falls for the governess his family hires, and watches his mind fracture as grief and mental illness close in. The film follows him from frantic young artist to institutionalized old man. Will Sharpe builds the picture around the idea that Wain sees the world as a current running through everything. The real subject is a man whose great gift and his unraveling come from the same wiring.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Wain as a bundle of nerves and tics who cannot sit still inside his own skin. He stammers through social ruin and lights up only when he talks about electricity or draws. Claire Foy plays Emily Richardson with a steady warmth that grounds him. Their courtship across a class line gives the first half its only real stakes. Andrea Riseborough plays the eldest sister Caroline as a hard, exhausted woman holding the family together while Wain spends the money on patents and dreams. Toby Jones plays the editor Sir William Ingram with the dry patience of a man who knows he is exploiting a genius.
Sharpe directs from a script he co-wrote with Simon Stephenson, and he treats the frame like a painting that keeps changing texture. The aspect ratio narrows and widens as Wain’s mind expands and contracts. Saturated color floods the screen when he is well and drains out when he sinks. Olivia Colman narrates the whole thing with a storybook lilt that keeps the tone light even as the subject darkens. The cat drawings dissolve into the live action so the line between Wain’s art and his hallucinations disappears.
The visual invention is genuine and the central performance is committed. The structure underneath is the standard cradle-to-grave march through a sad life. Sharpe wants whimsy and tragedy at the same time and the two never quite settle into one register. The film is most alive when it stays inside Wain’s electrified head and most ordinary when it remembers it has a timeline to cover.