The Electrical Life of Louis Wain

Benedict Cumberbatch incarnates the eccentric artist Louis Wain, a Victorian Englishman most known for his drawings and paintings of cats, in Will Sharpe’s unclassifiable gem, which runs the gamut from broad, laugh-out-loud comedy to heart-breaking tragedy. Covering 50 years, the film etches a compelling study of a man out-of-step with his times who nonetheless managed to capture the public’s imagination with his droll canvasses. Co-starring the wonderful Claire Foy (who made an indelible impression of the young Queen Elizabeth II in ‘The Crown’) as Emily, the love of Wain’s life, this is the perfect Christmas present for any film lover.

‘Louis is a funny, complicated character, and… Cumberbatch fills in this expressionistic portrait exquisitely. Together he and Sharpe make it clear that while Wain became famous for his anthropomorphic drawings of cats, he was—with each feathery and bold stroke, with every wild smile and rounded eye shining with tears or lit by a strange fire—also drawing an indelible, kaleidoscopic and finally mysteriously, deeply human self-portrait.’—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times