We first meet Will Sharpe’s version of Louis Wain, painter and eccentric in the early 20th century, as an old man (a well-aged Benedict Cumberbatch) gazing into space as images of a somewhat younger Wain walks solemnly through the street in funereal attire with a group of women. As we watch the older Wain dancing, the film’s title, “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain,” appears on screen with some sombre musical intonations. If a film’s opening might announce its thesis, I’m not sure what stakes Sharpe is setting up here.
We begin properly a few moments later in 1881, and the story goes from there. A fussy, neurotically imagined Wain on a train is interrupted by a patron who requests a drawing of a dog. With a few minutes Sharpe, and Cumberbatch, overemphasise the length and breadth of their characterisation of the man who will take up the frame for most of the two-hours to come – Louis Wain is odd. That’s it. Cumberbatch furrows his brow, and lumbers in an intentional show of eccentricity. His employer, Toby Stephens, looks on in befuddlement meant to emphasise what the antics already show us. We get one, two, three, scenes to tell us this again. And again. (And, mercifully, yet again.) Olivia Colman’s omniscient narrator joins us to narrate the important beats from early on to handhold us through the obvious.
Louis, the eldest of six, with five sisters to care for after his father’s death, finds it difficult to cleave to the path of convention amidst his desire for creative pursuits. That path is first troubled by the appearance of Emily Richardson (Claire Foy), a governess his eldest sister hires for the younger girls. Soon the two embark on a romance, against the displeasure of his family, and their life is wonderful for a time until a domestic tragedy launches him into his true calling – increasingly creative and surrealistic paintings of anthropomorphic cats. That’s the closest thing for a through-line here. Not a true plot or arc that the script (written by Sharpe with Simon Stephenson) seeks to engage with but a bookmark list of the life of Louis Wain.
There is a potential spark inherent in a reclamation of the past for film. Louis Wain married his sisters’ governess, a woman ten years his senior at 23. In the film, Benedict Cumberbatch (45) courts Claire Foy (37) to the consternation of Wain’s younger sister (Andrea Riserborough playing the role at 39). I’m no stickler for veracity in film. Films conjure magic from reality. But even as the all-knowing narrator insists on the shock of this woman, near-spinsterhood, being wed by a man of some stature – Foy’s youth in comparison to her co-stars makes this all feel quite silly. But, that’s a minor issue amidst larger concerns in “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain”.
Any film needs a thesis, an idea, a focus that justifies its existence. But biopics need them even more. For if a biopic is merely a historical account come to life – and many, are little beyond that – then what is the rationale for your biopic? Why this film rather than a historical essay? “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” feels unable to answer that query. It carries a semblance of an idea in its title, but little in its existence suggests any clarity on what it aims to do. Instead, it opts to set up all the major issues in Wain’s life in as broad strokes as possible so we understand the stakes at hand, but this “Electrical Life” is unpersuasive beyond that.
If this story is a dedication to Louis’ preoccupation with cats, the film does its intentions a disservice by spending so much time building the family dynamics and the awkward courting of Richardson. Foy and Cumberbatch don’t quite have chemistry but their bumbling awkwardness together feels manageable enough for the fable of the romance they are selling. But Sharpe does nothing with this. The brief romantic sojourn before her illness upends his life feels mildly warm, but also enervating to watch. It tells us that his life is changed by someone who understands him, but beyond lip-service of dialogue that paints the world in effortful prose little here is lithe.
Aware of its own scripted limitations, the camera occasionally remembers to centre the odd, or the unusual, often for no potent connection to anything. The camera will give way to an unusually lit moment, or the camera will tilt just so to indicate oddness. But, it’s all superficial. In a shot that lingers for a few seconds too long, the couple look out at us ensconced by a garland of flowers that frame the moment. Passingly cute, perhaps. But hardly instructive of anything beyond the film’s own inconsequentiality and its inability to establish anything close to a goal or a focus. But if Wain is an artist, what is the spark of artistry beyond that pain? “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” fumbles that reach towards pathos, dutifully limiting any kind of artistic desire in a sluggish, rote account of events that occurred.
Further afield, its conceptualisations of Louis’ family (his five sisters, his scatter-brained mother) turns it from bad to worse. Andrea Riseborough is presented with a termagant of a sister – resentful of Louis for usurping her role as head of the household, jealous of Emily – a lowly governess – for trapping her brother. It’s an execrable idea of womanhood in the 19th century that traps her with an unwinnable hand. She’s doing a lot to counter it — a glance here, the way she holds her body there — but it’s truly dreadful trappings. The other sisters don’t fare better, but no worse for the even more insubstantial presentation. And this might be fine, but the film brings the lot back for a last act arc and by that time the film has abandoned any interest in them.
Mental ailment and creativity are examined with a note of superficial perversion. Louis does something odd. Louis moves oddly. And suddenly Louis has lost his grip on reality. A late diagnosis of illness in a sibling, whose arc is dispatched in similarly ambivalent ways, feels particularly shallow. Sharpe illuminates little, and Erik Wilson’s dutiful cinematography even less
Are these real people? Do they exist beyond the frame? Those paintings are full of life, genuine weirdness and oddness. But this movie is so empty. It uses the zany as dressage but it goes nowhere. In one of these late film sequences, Colman’s narration intones that the death of a pet drove Louis into such despair that he wept for years. Just like that. Time passes and the camera glances over a brief moment of a prostrate Cumberbatch. It is as effective and striking as an entry in a Wikipedia article. Weightless. The narration keeps insisting on the reality of this.
But these characters aren’t people. They’re ciphers, standing in for names standing in for people that may or may not have existed a century ago. I’m not sure they even feel emotion as they go through the motions of the story here. They project overtures but nothing really strong, or painful or lasting or evocative. Nothing at all.
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain is streaming on Prime Video.
