Juliette Lewis Becomes a Chair in ‘By Design’ Surreal Indie Comedy | Trailer

Blending surrealism, satire, and existential comedy, By Design stars Juliette Lewis as Camille, a woman whose life takes an extraordinary turn when she literally swaps bodies with a chair.

Also featured in the film alongside Lewis are Mamoudou Athie as Olivier with narration by Melanie Griffith. Samantha Mathis, Robin Tunney, Udo Kier, and Betty Buckley round out the supporting cast.

Directed by Amanda Kramer, the daring indie voice behind Please Baby Please and So Unreal, By Design had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, then went on to screen at other festivals including AFI FEST and is set for U.S. theatrical release on February 13, 2026.

Here is the synopsis: Upon seeing a gorgeous chair in a showroom, Camille (Juliette Lewis) realizes that she truly envies the life of this perfect piece of furniture. If only she could be someone’s favorite thing. When she and the chair swap forms, Camille learns that she is better liked as an inanimate object than she was as a person: her mother (Betty Buckley) finds her to be a better listener, and her best friends (Samantha Mathis and Robin Tunney) enjoy a newfound, friction-free rapport. As the chair, Camille is unable to speak or move and winds up in the hands of Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), a minimalist bachelor who gradually becomes romantically fixated on his elegant new possession. Narrated by Melanie Griffith, this modern fable celebrates the messiness of female interiority with deadpan humor, surrealist flourishes, and interpretative dance numbers. An absurdist spin on the body-swap comedy, By Design is a bold new work from singular filmmaker Amanda Kramer.

In an interview at Sundance run, director Amanda Kramer explained her motivation for the film as simply, “Gorgeous chairs, the implicit and limiting morality of body swap movies, [and] jealous women.” In a followup question as to why does this story need to be told now?, she responded, “It doesn’t. It can be told at any time — we’re always filled with envy, we’re always obsessed with objects, we’re always hopeful for vacations from ours.”

In their review, Deadline described the film as ‘surreal, stylish and militantly absurd’, writing, “Both specific in its intent and mischievously opaque in its execution, this willfully strange art project can switch from flip to serious in the blink of an eye, using a terrific cast to weave a trance-like state of oddness that somehow sustains to the finishing line.”

Watch the official trailer for By Design above.