Film

The Price of Desire

A portrait of modernist designer Eileen Gray in her later years, navigating love, ambition and artistic vision in 1920s-30s France. Quiet and deeply felt, it moves at the pace of a woman rediscovering herself through work and desire. For anyone drawn to design history, artistic integrity, or stories where women's contributions were quietly erased.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you care about how a room, a chair or a window can carry a person's private feelings, and you enjoy slow, precise period portraits where the rivalry plays out through design and restraint.

Skip it if you need plot and momentum, since this is a quiet, talky film where the tension lives in glances and it can feel static.

What it asks of you: At 108 minutes it moves unhurriedly, and its emotional weather stays cool and restrained, so it rewards close attention to faces and rooms.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

La Haine1995

A visually inventive film about inequality and social fracture that, like Gray's story, uses design and composition to express what characters cannot say aloud. Mathieu Kassovitz's control is extraordinary.

But Bleak and sometimes brutal. The 90-minute runtime feels longer because nothing lets up, and the ending offers no comfort.

La Haine poster

Call Me by Your Name2017

A love story that luxuriates in landscape, architecture and the sensuality of artistic life. Guadagnino finds eroticism in how people move through space—exactly what Gray understood about design.

But Deliberately paced. If you need plot momentum or external conflict, the intimacy and slowness will feel thin.

Call Me by Your Name poster

The Danish Girl2015

Another recent portrait of a pioneering artist navigating identity and desire in early modernism. Tom Hooper finds tenderness in the gap between who we are and who the world sees.

But Some found the approach to its subject matter reductive. The visual beauty can feel like it's doing heavy lifting the script doesn't earn.

The Danish Girl poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Price of Desire

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Ascent1977

Both are about the integrity of a vision in a world that doesn't value it. Gray created beauty the world ignored; Shepitko filmed beauty in the face of annihilation. Both understood that the work is the resistance.

Larisa Shepitko's extraordinary film about two Soviet partisans climbing toward execution. It's abstract, almost wordless, visually ravishing—and it makes clear that human dignity is the only design that matters.

But Philosophical rather than dramatic. It's a film about the space between thought and action; if you need conventional narrative, it will feel impenetrable.

The Ascent poster
More like this (6)

I, Daniel Blake2016

Ken Loach's portrait of dignity under pressure. Like Gray's story, it's interested in the invisible labour of survival and how systems diminish those who refuse to be diminished.

But Angry in a way that can feel polemical rather than intimate. The suffering is deliberate; some feel preached to rather than moved.

I, Daniel Blake poster

The Servant1963

Losey's chamber piece about power, desire and the architecture of a household. It understands how interior space becomes a character, and how intimacy breeds complexity.

But Oblique and slow-burn. The class dynamics unfold beneath the surface; if you prefer direct storytelling, it will feel airless.

The Servant poster

Phantom Thread2017

A love story about creation, control and the person behind the work. Paul Thomas Anderson films fashion design as if it were moral philosophy—the craft is the relationship.

But Mannered and austere. The central relationship is dysfunctional; some audiences find it chilly rather than compelling.

Phantom Thread poster

Portrait of a Lady on Fire2019

Céline Sciamma's extraordinary film about an artist painting another woman, about seeing and being seen. It has Gray's understanding that desire and creation are inseparable.

But Deliberately sensual and patient. The pacing will feel glacial to some; it's a film that demands you sit with what's unsaid.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire poster

A Gentle Creature2017

Bresson adapts Dostoevsky into a meditation on female autonomy and quiet rebellion. Like Gray, it's about a woman claiming space in a world designed to diminish her.

But Extremely austere. The performances are still and inward; it can feel more like watching a painting than a drama.

A Gentle Creature poster

Wings of Desire1987

Wenders' meditation on beauty, mortality and the value of human particularity. It shares Gray's sense that the smallest details of a life—how light falls, how someone moves—contain everything.

But Dreamlike and philosophical rather than narrative. If you want plot momentum, the poetry will feel like an obstacle.

Wings of Desire poster

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