Atom User Reviews for The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Phenomenal film. We need more films about cats
Metacritic
Too often The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain favours eccentricity over actual insight. But even when the tones jar, Cumberbatch’s vulnerable, layered performance always rings true.
With its exuberant images (cats, oodles of cats), quaint Victorian settings, damask palette, odd camera angles and old-fashioned screen proportions, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain might have been too clever by more than half, except for its startling tenderness and depth of feeling, and the brilliance of its starring performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy.
Tottering unsteadily between mining Wain’s vast repertoire of eccentricities for comedy and slathering them in pathos, the movie winds up so busily whimsical it forgets to actually be about anything. If you don’t know who Louis Wain was before you see it, you’ll only be fractionally more illuminated, and possibly a good deal more irritated, after.