Keswick Film Club - Eiffel

Synopsis

Construction of the Eiffel Tower might not have made an opening night movie, but the writers here have invented a back story about the muse that inspired the brilliant engineer to greater heights and changed the film to a love story; have they devised a good plot? The critics are totally split, as usual, so it is up to you to decide.

"Engineer extraordinaire Gustave Eiffel is unimpressed, on first pass, by the sketches of a giant metal pylon presented to him, as a possible centrepiece for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. "It's ugly," he declares.

What changed his mind? The screenwriter of Eiffel, Caroline Bongrand, has concocted a theory, to do with a great lost love of his youth, a flighty ingénue called Adrienne Bourgès, whom Eiffel was prevented from marrying by her rich industrialist father.

As unproven propositions about historical figures go, this Francophone effort hews closer to 'Shakespeare in Love' than to 'Anonymous' – a fanciful embellishment of the facts, not a ripping up of every credible biography. Taken as a speculative romance, and in the right matinee spirit, it's lushly engaging, with a star pairing that – appropriately – rivets" – Tim Robey, Telegraph.