“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.
Apparently not, which is why the scriptwriters have contorted a real-life early love affair of the engineer Gustave Eiffel into a star-crossed something that, in this film’s supposition, spans decades and inspires the Eiffel Tower itself. (There’s no proof Eiffel and his paramour Adrienne Bourgès ever met again after their initial romance.) The filmmakers’ flight of fancy thus renders the building of the tower – branded “useless and monstrous” by such luminaries as Guy de Maupassant and Alexandre Dumas fils – as mere backdrop, giving short shrift to a fascinating topic.
That doesn’t mean Gustave and Adrienne’s love story is uncompelling. The casting works, even if the math doesn’t: The reliably charismatic, luxuriously bushy-haired Romain Duris (perhaps best known stateside for 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped) and Emma Mackey, continuing the promise of her breakout roles in Sex Education and the misbegotten Death on the Nile, have exquisite chemistry despite their 22-year age gap and the chortling idea that 26 years elapse in between Gustave and Adrienne’s assignations. (Mackey is 27 years old.) Their connection feels honest, intimate, and human-scaled, in contrast to the overall picture, which strains for epicness but comes off unfashionably awards-baity instead.
This article appears in June 3 • 2022.
