Victorian illustrator Louis Wain may have sunk into the depths of obscurity over the course of time, his biggest claim to fame being stacks upon stacks of pictures of cats, which may jog the memory for some, but are too cloyingly winsome for modern tastes. Nevertheless, there's quite enough material in his chequered life for a biopic, and the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch is just the right man for the job, bringing the requisite mania, fragility and weirdness to the portrait of a mentally unstable man who struggled to cope with the demands of a rigidly class-driven society and being the sole breadwinner for his five sisters and mother. The director does hedge his bets to make sure that the get the point about Wain's unconventionality and artistry by unnecessarly adding surreal visual flashes and having Wain harp on incessantly about electricity as the motivating force behind everything, but the most emotional moments in the story do carry a real impact.
6/10
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