Luke McWilliams gives his review of the 2021 French film, Eiffel, starring Romain Duris and Emma Mackey.
In the late 1800s, engineer Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) has created the framework for America’s Statue of Liberty. Eiffel is soon asked by the French Government to design something spectacular for the 1889 Paris World Fair. Eiffel refuses, but he soon changes his mind when the beautiful Adrienne Bourgès (Emma Mackey) slinks back into his life.
The movie was first pitched in 1997, with different directors including Luc Besson and Ridley Scott attached throughout the years. Writer Caroline Bongrand came up with the idea to mix the building of the Eiffel Tower with a fictitious star-crossed love story during her pitch, only to find fact in the fiction after the project was greenlit. The romantic storyline helped 1997’s Titanic play to a universal audience, or at least to those with beating hearts in their chests.
Eiffel is shot like a Roland Emmerich blockbuster with an epic structure slowly growing to dwarf the stunning Parisian skyline. The powerful and forbidden love between Eiffel and the Bordeaux Adrienne strains Eiffel’s public reputation, due to Adrienne’s journalist husband. Struggling with the pressures of such a daunting project, Eiffel must also temper his fiery passion for Adrienne, the woman whom he tragically thought he would never see again.
Verdict: Shot beautifully, capturing the nostalgic romance of Paris and the electrifying passion that drove a man to a competition for a tower of 300 metres. Vive la France! 4 stars.
Viewed at Palace Electric Cinema.
- Luke McWilliams | themovieclub.net
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