Louis Wain painted cats, hundreds if not thousands of cats. He painted the critters with big googly eyes, gathered round the dinner table, serving tea or slurping at straws. He painted them standing on their hind legs, holding golf clubs and swinging Ping-Pong paddles, and he painted them seated, driving cars and smoking cigars.
Premiering at the Telluride Film Festival (whose programmers find oddball biopics impossible to resist), the eccentric yet enjoyable “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” suggests that were it not for the prolific artist’s anthropomorphic paintings, English households might not have been quite so keen to embrace the independent-minded animal as a domestic pet. Personally, I’m skeptical that Wain was the cause — and besides, everyone knows cats can’t be tamed — although his influence can clearly be felt in the comic strips and cartoons that came after.
While the film’s fabric is amusingly embroidered with cats of all kinds,...
Premiering at the Telluride Film Festival (whose programmers find oddball biopics impossible to resist), the eccentric yet enjoyable “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” suggests that were it not for the prolific artist’s anthropomorphic paintings, English households might not have been quite so keen to embrace the independent-minded animal as a domestic pet. Personally, I’m skeptical that Wain was the cause — and besides, everyone knows cats can’t be tamed — although his influence can clearly be felt in the comic strips and cartoons that came after.
While the film’s fabric is amusingly embroidered with cats of all kinds,...
- 9/3/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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