Review: Real drama of 'Eiffel' is ignored for some sappy, and poorly done, romance.

The French drama “Eiffel” isn’t nearly as interested in its title character — the engineer Gustave Eiffel — and his namesake Parisian landmark as it is in serving up a cheesy romantic plot that defies credulity and history.

That’s too bad, because the drama behind designing and building the Eiffel Tower on the banks of the Seine would be enough for a good movie. Director Martin Bourboulon and screenwriter Caroline Bongrand (who received dialogue and adaptation assistance from the director and three other writers) stage some fascinating and tension-filled scenes of Eiffel (Romain Duris) promising his crew the construction site will be the safest in France — then risking life and limb pumping compressed air into the caissons to keep them from flooding, or putting in the bolts to connect the tower’s four legs with its lower platform.

Duris, one of France’s biggest stars, depicts Eiffel as a somberly serious egalitarian, who would rather build Paris’ Metro than some gaudy monument for the 1893 World’s Fair. As he creates the plan for his tower, which he will submit to a national competition, he runs into a lost love of his past, Adrienne de Restac (played by Emma Mackey, last seen in Kenneth Branagh’s “Death on the Nile”). Adrienne is married to Eiffel’s publicist, Antoine (Pierre Deladonchamps), and Eiffel is a widow with a doting adult daughter, Claire (Armande Boulanger) and a passel of young sons.

The romance between Eiffel and Adrienne is the part of “Eiffel” referred to by the opening title card, which says it’s “freely inspired by the true story.” Bourboulon and Bongrand stages the characters’ young romance in flashbacks, 20 years before Eiffel starts work his tower in 1889. Eiffel is building a bridge in Bordeaux for Adrienne’s wealthy father, and she invites him to her birthday party. Adrienne is taken by Eiffel’s seriousness, and Eiffel is smitten but heartbroken as Adrienne can’t pull away from her superficial rich friends.

The depiction of the youthful romance, and the possible rekindling of it 20 years later, is where the movie stumbles the worst. Much of this is in the casting: Duris, who’s now 48, looks hopelessly aged in the flashback scenes, while the 26-year-old Mackey is out of place playing Adrienne as a 40ish woman — and their later-in-life coupling plays more like a male fantasy than an authentic romance.

For the rivet counters in the audience, “Eiffel” has its delights — the period depiction of 1890s Paris and the special effects to depict the tower’s slow construction are note-perfect. Too bad the human story at the movie’s heart was anywhere close to being as believable.

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‘Eiffel’

★★

Opens Friday, June 3, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). Rated R for some sexuality/nudity. Running time: 108 minutes; in French, with subtitles.