The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain

Will Sharpe’s biopic is a stylish, moving account of the life of its title character, a real-life artist whose paintings of cats made him world-famous. Featuring a Benedict Cumberbatch performance the equal of his Oscar-nominated work in The Power Of The Dog, its unique blend of whimsy and woe is no surprise to fans of Sharpe’s work on the small screen, including Flowers and Landscapers. Here, he takes us through the film’s key moments.

RADIO CHATTER

Wain’s paintings brought him fame, yet he was troubled by the loss of his wife, severe mentalhealth issues and an obsession with electricity. Three of those are hinted at in the film’s opening, in which the crackle of a radio brings us H.G. Wells’ voice, espousing the virtues of Wain’s cat paintings, before we meet an elderly Wain in a care home. Initially, Sharpe didn’t want to start at the end. “It’s not uncommon to start that way,” he says. “But it felt like the most light-handed way of sneaking in the information about his impact on the cat’s status in society. And when you hear H.G. Wells later, you hear it in a different way.”

MEETING EMILY

The first half of the film is an entrancing portrait of the love story between Wain and his wife, Emily (Claire Foy). The two first encounter each other in a classic meet cute situation, with Emily — hired as the family governess — hiding in a wardrobe. “I don’t know exactly what the first encounter would have been,” admits Sharpe. “But that felt like a fun way to meet Emily. I wanted them both to have an active role in their relationship, and so we had to have someone to miss, to ache for when she was taken away from us.”

THE LIVE PAINTING

After Emily is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, the couple happen upon, and adopt, a cat that they call Peter. From that point on, Wain starts painting anthropomorphised pictures of cats, which make his name (if not his fortune). But one of the film’s most stunning moments comes from another, lesser-known aspect of his painting: his landscapes. As Louis and the dying Emily stand in a pretty wooded glen, Sharpe almost imperceptibly transforms it into one of Wain’s psychedelic landscapes, and freezes them there, together. “When you first look at his landscapes, they seem innocently bucolic pictures of the countryside, but the use of colour is quite bizarre in a way,” explains Sharpe. “I felt like he must have sat in that place to create such a vivid image of it. I wanted to take the audience to that place with him in some way.” A SAD FAREWELL When the inevitable comes, and Emily dies, the scene is a model of restraint, as Louis brings his wife her morning breakfast and, with just a glance over his shoulder, confirms the worst. “There’s something about the fact that he can barely

bring himself to look at it,” says Sharpe. “It sets you up for the story that carries through the rest of the film, where he’s trying to suppress grief and run from it.” Sharpe admits that they did film a shot of Emily lying dead in bed, but chose not to use it. “There was something about it that felt too heavy-handed. You know what he’s seeing.”

CAT SPEAK

Emily’s death plunges Wain, and the film, into a very different tonal space, as he battles with grief, poverty, further deaths in his family, and insanity. Even so, Sharpe still strikes a whimsical tone from time to time, most notably in a brief moment where we see some of Wain’s cats express their thoughts (their owner is convinced cats will soon speak like humans) via joyful, misspelled subtitles like, “I like jomping!” “There was a version where we could have had talking cats,” says Sharpe. “I was very keen for this film not to feel like a fantasy movie or too much like a family film. But as the owner of two cats myself, you do find yourself having fairly involved conversations with them.”

VISION QUEST

“One thing we always wanted to do was share in Louis Wain’s point of view and his psychology,” says Sharpe. There’s a surreal edge to proceedings from the off, as we are privy to some of Wain’s darker visions of drowning, or talking cats. But the second half is very much a tone poem — after another death in the family, Wain has a breakdown, represented visually as a confusing blur that segues into a kaleidoscopic montage. “Those images felt like a window into his soul. It’s the beginning of his journey of healing to the end of the film.”

WELLS WELLS WELLS

For a film with a preponderance of cameos (Taika Waititi, Richard Ayoade and Sophia di Martino all make one-scene appearances), Sharpe saves the strangest for last, as we see that H.G. Wells speech being recorded. Who better to play a visionary genius than musician and keen Wain fan, Nick Cave? “Nick was himself a collector of Louis Wain, and in that spiritual moment it felt like he himself has a love for this person,” explains Sharpe. “H.G. Wells was engaged in this campaign to support Louis Wain towards the end of his life, and that was a huge deal. To give the audience a sense of that thrill, we needed to find somebody who would give you that.”

LANDSCAPE’S END

The movie ends with a callback to that moment where Louis and Emily become frozen in one of his landscapes. This time, an elderly Wain goes for a walk and finds himself once again transported to that reassuring, beautiful vista. “He has a speech about how imagining the future is the same as remembering the past,” adds Sharpe. “It’s like he’s with her in that moment. Her presence in that moment is as strong as it was when she was physically there.” Electrifying.