He only saw the trailer, but his opinion is already clear.
Philippe Coupérie-Eiffel, great-great-grandson of Gustave Eiffel, is angry with the film released Wednesday, October 13 at the cinema.
Simply titled
Eiffel
, the feature film is not exactly a biopic, and the production assumes to have taken liberties with historical reality.
To read also
Eiffel
, by Martin Bourboulon: love in full swing
It retraces the life of Gustave Eiffel at the turn of his career.
In the 1880s, the engineer and industrialist from Dijon had just produced the Statue of Liberty, freshly sent to New York.
His obsessions then revolved around the metro project, the major issue of the time for Paris.
The government rather sees in Eiffel the master builder of the future Universal Exhibition of 1889. It is then that he meets Adrienne Bourgès, a love of youth, who goes, in any case in the film of Martin Bourboulon, the inspire and relaunch his creativity, to design the tower that will make him go down in history.
Romain Duris and Emma Mackey play the two main characters.
Historically, Gustave Eiffel has had a love affair with an Adrienne Bourgès as a teenager.
A story that has never known a second act, according to its descendant.
This imperfect reconstruction which did not please Philippe Coupérie-Eiffel.
"The public deserved better, at least the truth" he
laments in the columns of the
South West
.
The one who is also president of the association of
Friends of Gustave Eiffel
regrets that
"the genius of Gustave Eiffel and his work
" are reduced to "
a banal love story"
, qualifying the feature film directed by Martin Bourboulon as
"vaudeville ".
A letter to the producers
Based in Gironde, Philippe Coupérie-Eiffel has been defending the memory of his ancestor for decades.
Although he didn't see the trailer, the man was able to read the script a month ago.
A story that he did not appreciate, since he sent a letter to VVZ and Pathé, the co-producers of the film.
In his letter, he points to the liberties taken with historical reality and asks that the inscription
“fictionalized fiction”
be added at the beginning of the film.
A procedure far from being a first for him.
Already in 2011, he had Eiffage and its “
metal construction
” subsidiary, which he had been
suing for five long years,
convicted
for the construction giant to stop using his name in various activities.
More than the part of fiction contained in
Eiffel
, the man seems uncomfortable with seeing the private life of his ancestor portrayed in a big budget film, as he explains to
Sud Ouest
:
"It doesn't matter. the private life of great men, it is what they brought us that guides us, and that goes far beyond fiction. ”
