52
Metascore
10 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Screen DailyLisa NesselsonScreen DailyLisa NesselsonIssues of class, wealth and power are woven into the tale but this is a bittersweet love story at heart.
- 60The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeThe Observer (UK)Wendy IdeEiffel is not unentertaining – it would pass the time pleasantly enough on a long-haul flight. Together, Duris and Mackey have a corset-twanging chemistry. But the foregrounding of a fictional romance over a feat of engineering does feel like a missed opportunity.
- 60The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe whole thing is performed with relish and high spirits, and the digital fabrications of the Tower itself, rising out of the ground in stages with hair-raisingly dangerous structural work, are entertainingly contrived.
- 50VarietyPeter DebrugeVarietyPeter DebrugeBourboulon hatches a second-rate romance, rather than detailing the rich, real-life drama that swirled around Eiffel’s controversial endeavor.
- 50Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesAustin ChronicleKimberley Jones“Freely inspired by a true story.” That’s the filmmakers’ cunningly phrased hand-wave acknowledging the gap between actual history and the moony-eyed imagined romance proffered here. Still, it’s a curious deployment of the creative license: You’d think the construction of one of man’s greatest monuments would supply sufficient drama on its own.
- 50RogerEbert.comNell MinowRogerEbert.comNell MinowYou might think that a movie about the construction of one of the most iconic structures in the world would be carefully put together. But that is not the case with the sumptuous, often frustrating Eiffel, the story of a man whose name is as joined to the Tower emblematic of Paris as the 133-year-old beams that are still sturdily riveted (not bolted) together.
- 40Little White LiesJosh Slater-WilliamsLittle White LiesJosh Slater-WilliamsThis 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.
- 30The New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaThe New York TimesBeatrice LoayzaOne can’t help but wonder if Eiffel is merely a lame fantasy or a particularly spineless form of mythmaking, whittling down as it does one nation’s politically loaded event to the equivalent of an Eiffel Tower key chain with an inscription reading “city of love.”