The 100th anniversary of the French Revolution is coming up, and the city of Paris is looking for some big tourist attraction that will restore national pride after the Franco-Prussian War. So Gustave Eiffel (played by Romain Duris) buys the rights to a metal latticework tower and pushes it, along with his prestige from doing the interior of the Statue of Liberty and a lot of advanced bridges over the last couple of decades. To cap it off, he needs some political pull. Fortunately, his old school buddy, Bruno Raffaelli, has some solid connections, so Eiffel looks him up, and they connect. Too bad Raffaelli is married to Emma Mackey, with whom Eiffel had an affair more than twenty years ago and whom he desperately wished to marry before she just vanished. Fortunately, this is a French movie and she has no objection to renewing their affair, of which her husband soon becomes aware.
Oopsie. Fans of old movies will have no trouble recognizing the pushme-pullyou in which some man's biopic is augmented with a tragic love affair, so you can take an essentially masculine film about the problems of engineering and still bring in the lady audience. Many of the issues for building the Eiffel Tower are explained by the Great Man to a skeptical audience he is trying to sell the Tower to. Much is made of the caisson construction method, both in the question-and-answer sessions and when a politician is touring the site and the water starts rising. No mention is made of caisson disease, aka the Bends.
Meanwhile, Miss Mackey is a lovely, doe-eyed young woman who looks good with 19th-Century clothes coming off. Handsome camerawork and intelligent use of CGI to show the Tower under construction add up to a pleasant 108 minutes that will please old-fashioned audiences.
Oopsie. Fans of old movies will have no trouble recognizing the pushme-pullyou in which some man's biopic is augmented with a tragic love affair, so you can take an essentially masculine film about the problems of engineering and still bring in the lady audience. Many of the issues for building the Eiffel Tower are explained by the Great Man to a skeptical audience he is trying to sell the Tower to. Much is made of the caisson construction method, both in the question-and-answer sessions and when a politician is touring the site and the water starts rising. No mention is made of caisson disease, aka the Bends.
Meanwhile, Miss Mackey is a lovely, doe-eyed young woman who looks good with 19th-Century clothes coming off. Handsome camerawork and intelligent use of CGI to show the Tower under construction add up to a pleasant 108 minutes that will please old-fashioned audiences.