Premise: Gustave Eiffel isn’t just an architect. He also had a lost love.
The best version of this movie is looking to be Titanic. A fictionalized account of a great man-made structure with a love story at the core. When you pitch this movie to me like that, my first concern is with the epic scope parts, not the love story. After all, a love story just needs two able leads and some OK writing. Given that I saw this specifically for Emma Mackey*, I wasn't too worried about the love story aspect. Now, recreating the construction of the Eiffel tower on a pretty limited budget (~23€ million) was a real concern.
*While I know her for the British show Sex Education, she's actually French with a British parent. I thought it would be fun to see her in one of her French roles.
To my surprise, the part of the movie that really worked for me was the construction of the Eiffel Tower. The movie does a great job conveying the complexity of the project and the size of it. I came away from this movie impressed with the accomplishment more than I ever was before. Where the movie lost me was the love story. From what I can tell, everything about Mackey's Adrienne Bourges is made up. That in and of itself isn't a problem, except that it feels pretty made up. There isn't much emotional grounding to the romance. It's a collection of all the tropes. Lost love. Forbidden affair. Work over love. Mackey is stuck playing a character with little depth. Romain Duris is fine as Eiffel, I suppose. I won't be rushing to see anything else with him in it. They have the base compatibility of any two attractive Frenchmen and little more.
With a reasonable runtime and impressive production values for the budget, not to mention enjoying any chance to see something with Emma Mackey, it's hard to come out strongly against Eiffel. It's best to see it as a movie that doesn't need to be sought out.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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