Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Andrea Risenborough, Toby Jones and narrated by Olivia Colman. Written by Simon Stephenson and Will Sharpe and directed by Will Sharpe. Running time 111 minutes.
I love a good bio-pic, particularly the old Hollywood ones, which always painted their subjects as salt-of-the-Earth saints with only the mildest of blemishes against their reputations. Those films offered a gentle toe-dip into the lives of their real-life characters, usually following their rise to the top, as they overcome a series of obstacles, meet their one true-loves, and become famous, before a sad demise or a resounding 'Happily Ever After' as the studios turned their ordinary people with extraordinary talents into the later-day equivalent of Saints.
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, or TELOLW if you will, is a comedy/drama biopic that does all of the above but with one exception. It all appears to be true! Louis Wain was a true artist, beset by a catalogue of dramas that would break the strongest of us.
Wain was a Victorian artist who is credited for making the cat our favourite pet through a series of wonderful cat cartoons. He was a prolific artist with the ability, or so we are told, to draw simultaneously with both hands, he specialised in animals and worked for the London Illustrated News. At the age of 20, he was forced to provide for five sisters and one mother after the death of his father and the film follows his life from just after the funeral until his own demise some 59 years later. Along the way, he struggles with schizophrenia, meets and loses the one-true love of his life, rises to the top of his game, makes a fortune, loses a fortune and tumbles down into poverty, obscurity and madness.
Beautifully acted by ALL, from an electric Benedict Cumberbatch, deeply moving Claire Foy and Toby Jones, only Andrea Risenborough, as Wain's elder sister, mars the proceedings by acting on 11 while all around her are on 8. She's so insanely intense and comedically angry that she becomes the film's villainess. The true heart of this film is the relationship between Wain and his wife Emily (Claire Foy) and once she's gone from proceedings we, like Wain, are left bereft.
This is a whimsical film that is rich in detail and design, it looks simply lovely and is deeply moving at times, although I also found it somewhat frustrating, elements are skipped across, that I would love to have lingered longer over and there is a sense that we're being increasingly pulled faster towards a terrible conclusion and you so want Wain to get a happily-ever-after.
Once again, this sort of film sings for me, loudly above the usual belch of the blockbuster and I find myself happily lost in its running time and dismissing the few bum notes.
8/10
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