The Great Arch

In 1983, the President of France is set to reveal the winner of one of Europe's largest architectural competitions that year. Over 400 participants from around the world have competed for "La Grande Arche." It is intended to be a landmark structure that will form an axis with the Arc de Triomphe and the main avenue, the Champs-Élysées.

The winner turns out to be a Dane no one has heard of. Even in his home country, he is relatively unknown. Besides his own house, he has only designed a couple of churches. Claes Bang, known from Ruben Östlund's Palme d'Or winner The Square (2017), plays Otto von Spreckelsen, while Michel Fau shows his comedic talent as President François Mitterrand. Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen) plays the architect's wife and collaborator, and Canadian director Xavier Dolan appears as a high-ranking French bureaucrat.

As a drama about a visionary architect facing exhausting resistance from the client and shifting political winds, The Great Arch shares themes with the highly Oscar-nominated American film The Brutalist (2024). This story, however, is drawn from real life. It illustrates why many grand buildings don't always turn out as magnificent as they were conceived and drawn. The film is told with elegance and edge in about half the time of Brady Corbet's ambitious architect film.

Bang is excellent in the lead role. He stated in Cannes that he identified with von Spreckelsen. Bang was in a similar situation when he, as an unknown, mature Dane, achieved an international breakthrough overnight in The Square.

The Great Arch is a spectacular story about a spectacular building that turned an obscure professor into a world name. It is also a film about the fight for, and the power struggle surrounding, a prestige project. The culture clash between the visionary Danish architect and French bureaucracy is portrayed with tragicomic flair by Demoustier. The Frenchman has made a handful of very different films, ranging from a childhood portrait to a thriller and a prison drama. Like several of his works, this one is marked by the use of humor – in a film about architecture where art is a matter of life or death. Most who see it will likely want to seek out the building the film is about the next time they visit Paris.

This film was chosen by Adresseavisen's film critic Terje Eidsvåg