As an owner of psychotic cats that flee for their life every time I enter the room, I have become numb to the incredible spirits they light our world with. I blame it on their unfriendliness, but I feel this way about all animals. They are creatures with a sense of self, a mechanical instrument churning with innocent and unconditional passion.
This fascination is shared by the titular character in The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. The beautiful film is a dramatic retelling of the talented, Louis Wain and his triumph in switching the present view of Cats as animals only kept for catching mice to the undoubtedly loved creatures they are today. How might you ask? Through the medium of psychedelic artistry!
Set in the early 1900s, Louis Wain is introduced as a talented artist with a somewhat difficult personality. Plagued with schizophrenia, depression and crippling anxiety, Wain was deeply troubled. Life was treacherous, frightening and incredibly difficult; however, animals helped aid him through his trauma. To hold his furry friends up by depicting them in surreal atmospheres and circumstances provided a window into the artist’s mind. Though internally struggling, he gave onlookers a new perspective, one with inconceivably vibrant colours and patterns. Bursts of imagination spin out of control and anthropomorphic felines dance on top of tables. Pure ecstasy lit up saturated colours so extraordinarily different to the usual watercolour and ink paintings of the Victorian period that his work became instantaneously coveted by all. The cat’s status as ‘mouse catcher’ soon became ‘beloved pet’.
To exhibit this incredible infusion of colour and mixology of hues, everything else in the movie had to be turned down. The music is slow and faint and the cinematography is informative but simple. This is not a criticism in any way; in fact, I do not believe that the film would be as captivating if these aspects were as spectacular as the psychedelic moments. Instead, I believe that this enabled the stark contrast and provided the thrillingly breathtaking moments.
Along with the music and cinematography, costumes too had to bear the dull setting of London. Wain’s five sisters promenade in arrays of black, greys and white perhaps signifying the constant hardships they face in but ultimately dialling down the tone for the arrival of Miss Richardson as their tutor.
Several other characters appear in this story, but they too don sombre maroons, muddy browns, and dusty ivories. When compared to Wain’s imagination, they look undisturbed and ignorant of this deeper life, this delicate worldview. Instead, they overlook the excellence of nature as their lace ruffles grow moth-bitten, their stiff silks crease, and their entwined locks of braided hair are arranged tight in dry and brittle styles.
Of all the costumes, the most colourful was worn by Wain’s lover, Emily Richardson (Claire Foy). Symbolic of her character, Richardson wears an elegantly structured bodice with several small, covered buttons lining her centre front to the bottom of what the Victorians called a ‘Wasp waist’. This is where the silhouette pinches the waist and expands fuller at the hips – much like that of a wasp. She has slightly puffed shoulders and long sleeves with modest ruffles at the cuff. The pattern that covers her bodice along with the elegantly draped but minimalistic bustle skirt consists of ditsy flowers and is only ever trumped by strong diagonal lines inverted towards the waist in another set. These costumes are of course all based on the colour palette of blue. Richardson’s is a deep ultramarine blue reminiscent of Wain’s recurring nightmares where he believes that he is drowning, alone at night in the middle of a stormy sea.
This is not to say that the costumes were lacking in skill, quite the opposite! These costumes each had incredible detail sewn and laced into every inch. The designer, Michael O’Connor, envisioned a world where life continued, undisturbed. He envisioned walkers and passersby busily shuffling from one place to another whilst Wain stopped and looked. He considered the power that costume has to take attention away from the story instead cleverly embeds the personality and journey of every thread and fibre into the background unlike that of a usual period drama.
Although I love a good ‘frock flick’ filled with pastel poofs and dazzling golds, it is important to note that it is the action that informs the costume in a piece of entertainment and never the other way around. The next time that I see my cats, I hope to look at them in the same awe-inspiring way that Wain did and remember that life must require minutes of dullness to fully appreciate the seconds of brilliance.
“cute cats (12)” by Goneys is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.