E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea

I was cycling back from the Barbican to my home in north London last week. Sometimes the journey feels too mundane to do in one stretch, so I stop off at the Brunswick Centre to watch a film—also partly an excuse to have a glass of wine.

I opened my Curzon app to check what was on: E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea. I had no idea there was a new film about her (I’m a Curzon member and like to think I’m up on forthcoming films, so how I missed this—or how news of it didn’t come to me—is strange). Anyway, it was about to start, and the thought of missing the first few minutes wasn’t an option (have you seen Annie Hall?), so I cycled home and booked a ticket for the following week instead.

Born in Ireland in 1878, Eileen Gray moved to Paris in 1902 and was a rare force for her time—a woman succeeding on her own terms in the male-dominated worlds of design and architecture. She was largely underappreciated in her lifetime, but there is now renewed interest the designer, and this is the second film in the last ten years about her and the summer house E.1027, she built on the Côte d’Azur for herself and her lover. The 2015 film The Price of Desire was widely panned, and I can’t bring myself to watch it. But I’m a sucker for a documentary—especially when it involves one of my favourite subjects—so I was genuinely looking forward to this new film by Beatrice Minger.

I’ve now just come out of the Curzon at the Brunswick (which is coincidentally decked out with Gray’s Bibendum chairs and E.1027 tables). I swapped my usual wine for a Campari—it felt more appropriately classy for a film about the French Riviera in the 1930s (obviously, I would’ve preferred the French equivalent, had that been an option). As it goes, a tepid cup of coffee would have been a better reflection of the film.

The film charts her relationship with the architectural journalist Jean Badovici and the complicated dynamic with Le Corbusier—particularly his fascination with the house—and explores the themes of authorship, ego and gender. It is part documentary, part theatre, part reconstructed drama. Gray, played by a sombre Natalie Radmall-Quirke, narrates the film, which is ‘based and inspired’ by true events. I’m all for telling true stories in an imaginative and non-traditional way, but the staged elements feel awkwardly pretentious, and if you’re going to get actors to play real people, at least bring them to life.

Encouraged by Badovici, Gray built E.1027 between 1926 and 1929, and meticulously designed every single detail, including all the furniture, with a focus on how one would actually live in the space. While aligned with some of Le Corbusier’s modernist principles of architecture, the house has an energy, comfort, warmth and spirit that’s often lacking in his buildings. Yet this energy is completely absent from the performances on screen.

It’s not until the final ten minutes, when we see archive footage of Gray herself being interviewed in the 1970s—aged 96 or 97 (she can’t remember, she tells us)—that the film finally comes alive.

If you have a passing interest in Gray and her work, you’re likely to already know this well-told story, and you won’t learn anything new here—or gain a deeper sense of who she really was. Much of her personal archive was destroyed after her death, which perhaps explains the enduring mystery and fascination—so little is known about her. The film is, however, beautifully shot inside the restored house—so there’s that, and if you’re unfamiliar with Gray, it does offer a useful general overview. But honestly, if you want to understand her better, I think you’d be better off visiting the house itself.

Find out more about Cap Moderne and visiting E.1027 here.