Film on designer Eileen Gray nears completion

Associated media

Filmmaker Mary McGuckian's EG Film Productions Limited and Saga Film have announced that the movie, The Price of Desire, on the life of designer and architect Eileen Gray, will complete principal photography on location at Gray’s historic e1027 Villa in Roquebrune Cap Martin. The Price of Desire tells the controversial story of how the architect Le Corbusier effaced and defaced Eileen Gray's moral right to be recognized as the author of her work and as one of the most forceful and influential inspirations of a century of modern architecture and design.

Some of Gray’s work can be seen at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London – see Clare Finn’s article ‘Glimpsing the history of the world through its furniture’ in Cassone February 2013.

In The Price of Desire, Irish actress Orla Brady plays the lead role of Eileen Gray opposite Swiss actor Vincent Perez as her nemesis, Le Corbusier. Canadian actress and singer Alanis Morissette and the emerging Italian actor Francesco Scianna play her lovers, Marisa Damia and Jean Badovici.

The Price of Desire is an Irish-Belgian co-production between EG Film Productions Limited, a Lightstream Pictures co-venture, where Windmill Lane Pictures is providing post-production services in Ireland and Saga Film also provided production services in studio in Belgium. In association with US-based Liberty Liquid Films and Rush River Entertainment the film also has the support of The Irish Film Board, Bord Scannan na HEireann, the Irish S481 incentive programme, Film Fortis Fund BNP and Audiovisual SGR, the EC Media Programme. 

Production designer, Academy Award-nominated Anne Seibel worked with Emmanuelle Pucci to create a revisionary aesthetic inspired by the modernist architect and designer using contemporary production furniture kindly donated by Aram Designs Ltd, the Worldwide licence holder for Eileen Gray designs. Director of Photography, Stefan Von Bjorn contributed his technical mastery of digital cinematography, and award-winning costume designer Peter O'Brien recreated the period dress. As unit photographer, Julian Lennon has created an exhibition-level collection of stills, and portraits of the lead actors.

Apart from the current shooting on location at Eileen Gray's iconic e1027 Villa in Roquebrune Cap Martin, other filming has taken place at Vezelay, France and at Monev Studios in Brussels, Belgium, where many of Gray’s Parisian interiors were faithfully re-created with a contemporary twist.

No release date has yet been given.