Eif­fel

Eif­fel isn’t so much a biopic of French engi­neer Gus­tave Eif­fel (played here by Romain Duris), but rather a work of fic­tion inspired by cer­tain his­tor­i­cal facts. It posits why exact­ly Eif­fel had a sud­den change of heart in becom­ing involved with the met­al tow­er project that would adopt his name after ini­tial­ly abstaining.

The facts, accord­ing to the film, are as such: dur­ing con­struc­tion of a bridge in Bor­deaux in 1860, Eif­fel had a pas­sion­ate romance with a woman named Adri­enne Bourgès (Emma Mack­ey). A wed­ding was announced but can­celled by her par­ents. Many years lat­er, Eiffel’s son mar­ried Bourgès’ niece, mean­ing the two were reunit­ed. What the film sug­gests is that maybe they actu­al­ly met again before that, with the poten­tial rekin­dling of a lost love dri­ving Eiffel’s pur­suit of the titan­ic tow­er under­tak­ing, despite her now being mar­ried to his old friend, Antoine (Pierre Deladonchamps).

Mar­tin Bourboulon’s film is hand­some­ly mount­ed, with visu­al effects, cos­tum­ing and pro­duc­tion design ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing its nom­i­na­tions for France’s César Awards. At the cen­tre, Duris and Mack­ey have a sol­id rap­port. This is French-British ris­ing star Mackey’s first screen role in French, and she’s charis­mat­ic enough to make future French-lan­guage fea­tures cen­tred on her seem entic­ing. That said, as engag­ing as she is, her cast­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly embod­ies the slop­pi­ness of the film as a whole.

Mack­ey was 23 when the first half of Eiffel’s shoot occurred in the final third of 2019, and 24 when the pan­dem­ic-delayed sec­ond part resumed lat­er in 2020. Accord­ing to the records that informed the film’s nar­ra­tive, Adri­enne Bourgès was 18 when she met Gus­tave Eif­fel (him­self 28) in Bor­deaux of 1860. That year is explic­it­ly stat­ed on screen. When the pair reunite for the first time after decades apart, at a din­ner par­ty, it’s 1886 (also explic­it­ly stat­ed), and so Mack­ey is there­fore meant to be around 44 for most of her screen time – an age she absolute­ly doesn’t look.

There is no dis­cernible attempt to age her up with make­up in the late 1880s scenes. Instead, rather inex­plic­a­bly, clear attempts with the make­up are only present in the 1860 flash­backs, where the entire solu­tion for age­ing her down for when the character’s not yet in her twen­ties – to make there be a per­cep­ti­ble dif­fer­ence between Bourgès in the two time­lines – seems to have just been to give her a fair­ly strong tan when younger.

The care­less­ness extends to the very struc­ture of the film. The emo­tion­al res­o­nance of the romance isn’t ful­ly realised thanks to the con­stant jump­ing around in time. Amus­ing­ly, a few flash­backs trig­gered while Eiffel’s mid-design­ing the tow­er involve him and Bourgès romp­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to wit­ness­es. A pos­si­ble joke about Paris’ most phal­lic land­mark, lat­er under­mined by the sug­ges­tion of what the tower’s shape is actu­al­ly sup­posed to rep­re­sent (hint: a let­ter). The last shot of the film spells out the tower’s design’s con­nec­tion to Adri­enne Bourgès with all the sub­tle­ty of a sledgehammer.