Mark Reviews Movies: EIFFEL

Eiffel, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 2, 2022

Few structures are as iconic as the Eiffel Tower, and Caroline Bongrand's screenplay for Eiffel attempts to put the design, construction, and basic existence of Gustave Eiffel's triumph of engineering into an entirely different context. It's a tragic love story, just to jump to both the point and the inherent disappointment.

The tale here is "freely inspired by a true story," which means it's probably bunk for the most part, but that shouldn't be an impediment to whatever scenario Bongrand has invented from research or imagined out of thin air. After all, history can be flexible, depending on whose story is being told, who is telling that story, and why it's being told in the first place, among other considerations.

Could Eiffel have fallen in love in the earlier part of his career? Of course, he could have. Could that love have been doomed from the start, simply on account of matters of class? Obviously, that could have happened, as well. Could he have pined for this woman for decades, even after marrying and having five children and rising above his station as a meager engineer to become a fairly wealthy businessman? Surely, such things are possible, and in the realm of speculative history, that's really all that matters.

For this story to work, though, the context is important. That larger context here is the planning and execution of a modern marvel—a metal tower, rising 300 meters above the ground, anchored within the soft soil near the Seine, impervious to lightning, resistant to wind, and assembled using technology that was new and effective but not exactly tested to the point of absolute proof of its success. The love story between the master engineer and a mysterious woman from his past has to, not only stand on its own, but also match the significance of the tale around it to some extent.

It doesn't in this situation, but to be fair, no love story, no matter how unrequited or romantic or doomed or persistent, really could approach the scope, scale, and significance of the other, actually historical and historic story. That Bongrand and director Martin Bourboulon give us a sense of the monumental achievement occurring in the background of their romance is, at least, worthwhile—even if that part of Eiffel's history isn't the primary focus of this movie.

The engineer is played by Romain Duris, who plays Gustave as both a younger man obsessed with a woman and a 20-years-older man obsessed with making his mark in history, before becoming obsessed with the same woman again. She's Adrienne Bourgès, played by Emma Mackey, who certainly convinces us that someone might hold a flame for her for an extended period of time, and existing in this story less as an actual character and more as a malleable idea.

In the story from the past here, she's the adventurous, somewhat rebellious child of a wealthy family in the country, with her father (played by Bruno Raffaelli) financing the building of a local bridge. The structure of Bongrand's screenplay, which has the older Gustave recalling the course of his romance with Adrienne through multiple flashbacks, doesn't help matters much. Since all of this is from his perspective, there's little understanding of Adrienne as a person (which makes it possible for a third-act twist that puts the fate of their initial relationship into a new, if predictable, context), and because there's a far more intriguing feat of construction and politicking happening alongside these remembrances, the flashbacks feel like interference.

In the present-tense scenes, set circa the 1880s as Gustave plans and oversees the building of the tower, the engineer, a widower who now owns and operates his own company, reconnects with Adrienne. He's still enamored but hesitant to do anything about it, because of the broken heart from a couple decades earlier. Plus, she's married to Antoine (Pierre Deladonchamps), a journalist who's friendly to Gustave and his idea—until the reporter figures out that something might be going on behind his back. Meanwhile, a forgotten subplot, involving Gustave's daughter Claire (Armande Boulanger) planning to marry (His other children are only mentioned once), doesn't do much for Gustave as a character or itself.

Indeed, none of this material is particularly engaging on its own. It especially falls short within the bigger-picture story of how the Eiffel Tower was sold as a concept to the government for a forthcoming world's fair, started and continued construction amidst various controversies involving its aesthetics and workers, and implemented some revolutionary technology to see it come together piece by imposing piece. A couple sequences—such as a tour of the underground space that will become a concrete anchor, as well as the movement of massive pillars by matters of centimeters—are particularly effective at showing just how dangerous, terrifying, and precise the construction process had to be.

The spectacle of these re-creations is convincing. The rest of Eiffel, particularly the story's final supposed revelation about the meaning of the eponymous tower, isn't. It's that simple and, because there's such a compelling story right there, that unfortunate.

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