Fresh off delivering the best and most unexpected performance of his career in Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” Benedict Cumberbatch retreats to more familiar territory in a whimsical Victorian biopic that might as well be called “The Ridiculousness of the Cat.” Of course when it comes to the late 19th- and early-20th-century artist Louis Wain — whose adorable illustrations of big-eyed moggies effectively invented our modern understanding of felines as domestic friends — “ridiculousness” is meant with utmost affection.
After all, Wain was nothing if not a ridiculous man himself, at least by the rigidly classist standards of his time.An eccentric polymath who compensated for his lack of people skills with a savant-like gift for sketching animals, Wain was the sort of person who would probably be diagnosed with everything from Adhd to Borderline Personality Disorder if he were alive today.
But Will Sharpe’s “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
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