STREAMING CINEMA
A Beautiful Room Wasted
“Price of Desire” fails to convey architect Eileen Gray’s genius
BY GARY M. KRAMER
Eileen Gray, the bisexual
architect at the center of
“The Price of Desire” was
never truly valued during
her lifetime. If writer/ director
Mary McGuckian’s 2015 fi lm, now
getting a North American release,
is meant to correct that, Gray deserves
better. To borrow the title of
Edmund White’s novel, the beautiful
room is empty.
McGuckian opens her stylishlooking
fi lm with an auction of
one of Gray’s “Dragon” armchairs,
where it fetches a record 22 million
Euros. The buyer claims the expense
is, “the price of desire.”
But there is much to be desired
from this wan, stagy biopic. The period
clothes and architectural and
design details can be appreciated,
but the aggressively soft-focus cinematography
is as unsharpened
as the characters.
Mary McGuckian’s biopic fails to
convey the genius of architect Eileen
Gray
There is a relentless, intrusive
score, crummy dialogue that
switches from French to English
— often within the same scene—
and pretentious moments of direct
address. The editing is more
confusing than clarifying; even a
slow-motion sequence involving
German soldiers intruding lacks
suffi cient heft and power.
Gray (Orla Brady) was part of
the modernist movement in architecture.
She designed and built
E-1027, a fabulous, minimalist
house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.
She shared it with her lover, Jean
Badovici (Francesco Scianna), and
he took co-credit for it in print,
much to Gray’s chagrin. Likewise,
Le Corbusier (Vincent Perez) later
painted murals on the walls of
the house — Gray wanted it unadorned
— and the property was
often mistaken to be his. The rivalry
between Gray and Le Corbusier
provides much of the fi lm’s drama.
Le Corbusier is intrigued by
Gray when he fi rst meets her, and
he longs “to act pause recklessly”
with her. But, he says, in one of
Alanis Morissette and Orla Brady in Mary McGuckian’s “The Price of Desire,”
Vincent Perez.
the fi lm’s howlers, “I could hear
your heart was singing a different
symphony.” For viewers who don’t
get the subtext, this indicates that
Gray was sexually attracted to
women. She is soon seen coupling
up with Marisa Damina (Alanis
Morissette), a singer she admires.
Disappointingly little is made of
her same-sex relationships.
When Badovici meets Gray and
interviews her shortly thereafter,
she talks about being untethered
romantically to have the freedom
to think and create. He immediately
woos her.
Is McGuckian trying to show in
“The Price of Desire” that Gray’s
lack of greater success stems from
being oppressed by men? That may
be the case, but it is presented in
a clunky fashion. Gray complains
JULIAN LENNON
JULIAN LENNON
about the “boy’s club” consisting
of Le Corbusier, Badovici, and
Fernand Leger (an aptly cast Dominique
Pinon) and runs away to
be with her lesbian friends. However,
she tells them she is unable
to change the deed of E-1027 from
Jean’s name to hers. It seems more
out of laziness and sentiment than
impossibility.
Gray’s devotion to Jean is alarming,
given how badly he treats her.
In addition to riding her coattails
professionally for his advantage,
he cheats on her with other women
and drinks excessively. He asks Le
Corbusier to be his mouthpiece to
help him get her back when they
are separated.
It is frustrating to see Gray belittled
in this way, and even more
so because of the fi lm’s lackluster
performances and leaden direction.
McGuckian should be positioning
Gray as a feisty visionary,
a woman who forges her own
path. Instead she is seen foolishly
twirling about in architectural settings.
There is no real sense from
watching this fi lm of what makes
Gray tick. Viewers unfamiliar with
her may be inspired to do research.
Wikipedia indicates she was the
fi rst woman in France to get a
driver’s license, which suggests
more independence than anything
presented in this fi lm.
It’s notable that McGuckian
wants to focus mainly on the period
of Gray’s life involving E-1027.
When Le Corbusier looks at the
camera and whispers “And now
art enters in,” viewers may stifl e
laughter as they wait, fruitlessly,
for art to arrive. Perez’s efforts to
capture the famed architect is reduced
to him appearing in little
more than his signature glasses
and a skimpy swimsuit.
The actors hardly seem to be
trying in their roles. As Gray,
Brady is often seen contemplating
something — an odd strategy for
injecting life into such a stillborn
project. Scianna was perhaps told
to play Jean as louche, but he just
seems fatigued.
Near the end of “The Price of Desire”
the bisexual Australian writer
Bruce Chatwin (Martin Swabey)
meets Gray for an interview. She
inspires him to go to Patagonia. It
is completely superfl uous.
McGuckian includes many
scenes that are set in blindingly
white spaces to illustrate Gray’s
architecture and design. (It also,
inadvertently makes the white-onwhite
subtitles diffi cult to read).
Her fi lm, fi ve years on the shelf, is
the cinematic equivalent of a white
elephant.
THE PRICE OF DESIRE | Directed
by Mary McGuckian | In English
and French with English subtitles
| Giant Pictures in association with
Pembridge Pictures | Available on
Apple TV, Prime Video, and digital
platforms
June 25- July 15, 2 60 020 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
