Eiffel in Love

First and foremost a overly sappy romantic drama that checks all the usual clichés. Apart from the 3rd act, the eiffel tower construction takes a back seat to this romance story. And this 3rd act is wich stood out the most, for the overall good execution and telling the story of the eiffel tower construction. But overall it's a basic, well made, romance movie with a few hints of originality sprinkled throughout.

6/10: little basic, but not that bad tbh.

Eiffel is a new romantic biography directed and partly written by Martin Bourboulon, the director of the Papa ou maman film series.

The film is about the engineer Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris). After helping to design world-famous buildings such as the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel is asked by the French government to help design a new tower. Eifel rejects the government, because he is already busy enough with other projects. When Eiffel sees his old love Adrienne Bourgès (Emma Mackey) during a dinner, his old feelings for her rekindle. To give her these feelings again, he tries to impress her and agrees to build the tower. So this becomes his new passion project.

The project of this biography of how the Eiffel Tower was conceived and built was already around 1997, but never really came up with a good idea or story to make into a film. Several film studios and directors have looked at the project, but have not come up with a film. In the end, the starting producer Vanessa van Zuylen managed to make the film together with director Martin Bourboulon. Together with screenwriter Caroline Bongrand, they continued with the project that led to the final film.

Unfortunately, all the people behind the idea and making of the final film are on the novice side in the film world, which unfortunately shows in the film. They chose to focus the film more on the relationship between Gustave and Adrienne than on the actual design or construction of the Eiffel Tower. The film quickly becomes a cliché romantic film about two old lovers, who struggle to pick up their old relationship again. For people who like romantic movies, the movie can be entertaining, but otherwise just come across as a standard romantic drama. People who would rather have seen the story of the design or construction of the Eiffel Tower should check Wikipedia or an informative YouTube video. The scenes of the building process of the Eiffel Tower are interesting to watch, but for this you have to get through a somewhat trite romantic film.

Romain Duris and Emma Mackey deliver good acting, but don't do anything special with the film either. In flashbacks, the viewer learns how the two met and how their relationship went.

Director Martin Bourboulon truly captures the passion and enthusiasm of the protagonist, Eiffel, in this biographical film. Tasked with designing a magnificent landmark for the upcoming Paris World Fair, the movie not only authentically portrays his love story with Adrienne but also emphasizes Eiffel's spirit and his rallying cry to the workers. Particularly, in the face of engineering challenges and the essence of problem-solving, it underscores why the world has not seen a second Eiffel Tower. This film beautifully illustrates that when you beautify and perfect something, it becomes truly awe-inspiring because the fusion of aesthetics and craftsmanship sets the bar for greatness.

Pleasant for the acting and nice to watch for the budget invested in the sets and everything of this period... for the rest, the love story, put ahead of the architectural project and G. Eiffel's carreer, is disappointing and particularly boring (and too loooong), too bad ...

The acting was good, as were the photography and the sets which suitably evoked the Paris of the 1880s and the tower construction.

I felt it a shortcoming that the film seemed to reduce the massive engineering design work to little more than Eiffel drawing sketches of his planned tower. In those pre-computer times, there would have had to be teams of people doing calculations (probably with slide rules), but while this aspect did not need to be laboured, it would have been good to at least give it some acknowledgement by having Eiffel walk through the office.

As already noted in the comments, the background love story sometimes intrudes on the film narrative. There also seems a jump in the tower construction to finalisation, despite questions having been raised about the ongoing support of the council and funding.

Overall, an enjoyable film, even if not in the 'great' category.