1889 must have been a big year for Paris – it was the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, the World’s Fair was coming to town, and the city had just completed the tallest tower on the planet. To be fair, France has grabbed the world spotlight many times in the past few centuries, but it’s usually for something negative, like Napoleon or Nazi invasions or cheating cyclists; 1889 seemed to be all about the good stuff. I wish I could say the same for this movie.
Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) couldn’t keep it in his pants. The second he sees the girl of his dreams, Adrienne Bourgès (Emma Mackey), he immediately wants to create the greatest phallic symbol in –until then- human history. Yup, one dinner party with his old flame and Eiffel immediately summons an erection so grand it’s a tourist attraction. Points for originality, deductions for style.
Eiffel was so notable as a structural engineer that he was commissioned to design the inner framework for the Statue of Liberty. That’s kinda the story of his life – he got under her dress, too, but in the end, she wasn’t his. Hence the biography of Eiffel centers around a tragic love affair between Eiffel and the tress he couldn’t trestle.
In 1866, Eiffel got the contract for the Bordeaux bridge, a twice critical period in his life as the bridge will become his reputation and the leisure-wealthy Bourgès are the toast of Bordeaux. This is where Gustave meets, romances, and loses Adrienne the first time. The film fluctuates timelines between the late 1860s and the 1880s, when Eiffel wins the Tower contract. It’s not easy to tell which is which all the time because the makeup artist spent ZERO energy distinguishing 20-year-old Adrienne from 40-year-old Adrienne. The best way to tell the ages apart are by either the background or the length of the Eiffel beard, a multi-year construction unto itself.
It’s fairly clear Eiffel wanted to be Titanic – an epic period romance combining the history we know with some elements we don’t. Unfortunately, this is no Titanic. I’ll grant you that historically the Eiffel 
Tower does rank right alongside the Titanic among things your average high school student might be able to identify on a pop quiz, but that’s where the comparison ends. Eiffel’s romance has nothing of the depth or payoff with respect to Titanic, and even if it did, Duris/Mackey is no DiCaprio/Winslet. The best scene in the film exists completely independent of romance. It involves the construction of of the tower itself, which I think would have made for better focus. In the aftermath, there’s a moment where director Martin Bourboulon clearly wants to invoke the Titanic prow “I’m flying” meme, but the image gets nowhere close to Titanic’s example – and how could it? Adrienne is voluntarily married to another man, and not an evil one at that, do we really want her to indulge?
I cannot say I was disappointed by Eiffel; the film came out last year. If it had been on the Titanic romance level, it would have made a greater splash at the time. If I’m being honest, however, I guess I was hoping for a better history lesson. The film didn’t even show the projects Eiffel beat out which made the bidding scene all the tamer. We know who wins this. We know the Eiffel Tower gets built. So drum up the factors that almost made it not so at the time including financial, political, and societal pressure in addition to the physical problems. There was some of this, but not enough to justify the disproportionate amount of time spent on failed romance.
Eiffel was an engineering knower
Yet a woman left his spirits much lower
His ill-fated romance
Ends in song and dance:
“Tower? I don’t even know her”
Rated R, 108 Minutes
Director: Martin Bourboulan
Writer: Caroline Bongrand, Thomas Bidegain, Natalie Carter
Genre: Making metaphors out of molehills
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of big romantic gestures
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Fans of reality
