EIFFEL – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

We’ve all looked at skyscrapers thrusting tall and proud into the unsuspecting sky and snorted to think of what was subconsciously driving the (inevitably male) architects. Right? Of course we have. Yet I cannot think of a single film before this one that takes our presumptions and seems to say, “Yes, heh heh, yesssss,” with a glint in its eye. I mean, sure, Kate Winslet’s snide aside in Titanic to White Star exec Bruce Ismay about Freud’s “ideas about the male preoccupation with size” is one thing. (That’s about a ginormous ship, not a ginormous building, of course, but same difference.) Eiffel is something else entirely. Also what it does is almost surely subconscious, too, which is sort of perfect. *snort*

This French romantic drama posits that engineer Gustave Eiffel (Romain Duris) had no interest in his company — which had just delivered the Statue of Liberty to New York City as a gift to America — building a massive tower for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris. Continue reading…