Juliette Lewis

When director‑writer‑musician Amanda Kramer announced her latest feature, the industry buzzed about a film that flips the body‑swap genre on its head. Titled By Design, the project pairs Kramer’s avant‑garde sensibility with Juliette Lewis’s kinetic performance, promising a meditation on desire, objecthood and gendered artifice. In an exclusive interview for archyde.com, Kramer and Lewis unpack the film’s premise, its moral underpinnings and the physical rigors of playing a literal piece of furniture.

At its core, By Design follows Camille (Lewis), a woman who, after a chance encounter with a designer chair in a high‑end showroom, finds her soul inexplicably swapped with the inanimate object. The narrative explores what happens when a person discovers that “being wanted” can mean becoming an object of desire in the most literal sense. The film is narrated by Melanie Griffith, adding another layer of meta‑commentary on how society underestimates certain bodies.^{Melanie Griffith IMDb}

The Premise and Its Unconventional Moral Lens

Body‑swap movies traditionally resolve with the protagonist learning to appreciate their original form. Kramer, however, argues that her film “has a Christian center” that urges gratitude without prescribing a return to the status quo.^{the interview quote} “For Camille, the swap isn’t a detour—it’s an awakening,” Kramer explains. The director suggests that the story challenges the genre’s moral calculus by allowing the character to remain content in her fresh wooden form, an idea that resonates with contemporary conversations about body dysphoria and identity fluidity.

Art, Artifice, & the Visual Language of Stillness

Kramer’s oeuvre—most notably the 2021 feature Please Baby Please, a stylized homage to 1950s greaser films—has long interrogated gender norms through a deliberately artificial aesthetic.^{Metacritic: Please Baby Please} In By Design, she extends this approach by staging scenes on static soundstages that evoke museum‑like displays. “I seek the camera to capture the elegance of an object whereas still conveying human emotion,” Kramer says, describing how she uses color palettes reminiscent of 1980s interiors to signal Camille’s internal landscape.^{specific color references}

Playing the Chair: Physicality Meets Philosophy

Lewis, known for her physically demanding roles, faced a unique challenge: embodying a chair without becoming a lifeless prop. “We spent hours adjusting pillows and arching my body to achieve a shape that feels both architectural and alive,” Kramer recounts. The director emphasized that Lewis was never asked to keep her eyes closed; instead, the performance relied on micro‑expressions—tiny flickers in her gaze that convey longing even while she remains motionless.^{behind‑the‑scenes details}

To capture these nuances, the crew employed a dual‑camera setup: one lens focused on the surrounding actors, while a second stayed on Lewis to record subtle eye movements. “When I look at Mamoudou Athie’s Olivier, you can see a glint of curiosity that hints at an emerging intimacy between flesh and wood,” Lewis notes.^{production technique}

Cast, Crew and Distribution

Alongside Lewis, the film reportedly features 1990s icons Robin Tunney and Samantha Mathis as Camille’s friends, with Mamoudou Athie portraying the ex‑husband who falls for the chair.^unconfirmed Music Box Films is listed as the distributor, a company known for championing independent cinema with strong artistic voices.^{Music Box Films Official Site}

What to Watch Next

While the exact release window remains unconfirmed, Kramer has hinted that By Design will debut at a major festival before moving to limited theatrical and streaming platforms. The film’s exploration of object‑hood, desire and self‑acceptance positions it as a potential touchstone for discussions about gender fluidity in contemporary cinema.^unconfirmed

As audiences await the premiere, the conversation sparked by Kramer and Lewis underscores a larger shift: body‑swap narratives are no longer just comedic escapism but can serve as powerful allegories for the ways we inhabit—and sometimes wish to abandon—our bodies. Whether By Design fulfills that promise will grow clear once the film lands on screens.

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