Eiffel: a great popular film (review)
A flamboyant love story set against the backdrop of the construction of the famous Tower, where the duo Romain Duris-Emma Mackey sparks.
We told you in our issue 517 the crazy adventure of this film. An epic spanning more than 20 years between Hollywood and Paris, before finally seeing the light of day under the leadership of producer Vanessa Van Zuylen, at the end of 2021. But if in 24 years, many screenwriters have succeeded one another and the story has inevitably evolved, its spine, imagined by Caroline Bongrand, has remained intact. A mix between historical facts as they actually happened and the part of invention that cinema allows, without betraying the story.
Here is our review ofEiffel, which we are republishing on the occasion of its broadcast this evening, on M6. Note that the new film by its director, Martin Bourboulon, is currently in theaters: he is the one who adapted The Three Musketeers: d’Artagnan And Milady.
Emma Mackey, the Eiffel asset: “My desire for French cinema was growing stronger and stronger”
We are at the end of the 1880s. Gustave Eiffel is then at the peak of his career and the French government offers him the idea of creating a spectacular monument for the Universal Exhibition of 1889. But, to everyone’s surprise, he declines, all at once. another obsession: his metro project for the capital. Except that this refusal will be overturned the day he meets again by chance his childhood sweetheart from whom he had been brutally separated. Eiffel will therefore indeed embark on this crazy project of a Tower of unprecedented height without the reason for this turnaround having been clearly documented until now, leaving plenty of room for fiction to unfold.
Eiffel reconnects with a full-fledged genre of French cinema, reduced to the bare minimum for more than 25 years. The popular historical costume film. A cinema that is expensive – which dampens the enthusiasm of investors – and which, poorly managed, can give rise to bombastic works where the concern for a perfect reconstruction overwhelms everything else. Eiffel escapes this pitfall or, more precisely, builds itself against it. What he proposes is not to tell the story of the construction of the Eiffel Tower but to make this epic the driving force behind what constitutes the heart of his story. A flamboyant love story. A seemingly impossible love story due to differences in social class but which will push both of its protagonists to constantly push back obstacles. The romantic is in control of this Eiffel, the liveliness, the refusal to be crushed by the period film aspect too. Behind the camera, Martin Bourboulon (Dad or Mom) acquires a new dimension here. Never stifled by the pressure that such a budget puts on your shoulders, its staging alternates calm field-against-field and twirling moments with the camera on the shoulder to tell the story of this Eiffel, sometimes knocked out standing as during the impromptu reunions with Adrienne or when he can win her back from the one who has become his companion, and sometimes overexcited when passion gives him wings. Bourboulon does not film an era but characters who transcend this era and whose modernity is found in his work on the costumes and his direction of actors.
In the main roles, Romain Duris and Emma Mackey spark. Their alchemy sets the tone for the story. The first is as convincing in the intimate scenes as in the moments where as leader, he must harangue his men who think the project of this Tower is doomed to failure. The second, for her first major role in the cinema, seems to have come from a Jane Austen novel. And beyond her stunning charisma, she wins over everything in her path with her energy, her emotional subtlety and her appetite for playing with others. Because Eiffel is also an actors’ film where, with the exception of Pierre Delandonchamps (perfect as Eiffel’s rival, refusing to throw in the towel), the supporting roles (excellent Alexandre Steiger, Armande Boulanger, Andranic Manet…) do not lead – as is often the case in this type of film – to a parade of well-known and all-too-recognizable faces. The proof that this Eiffel believes first and foremost in the power of the story he tells and how to tell it. A successful bet.
Trailer :
Excluded – Romain Duris: How I became Eiffel
