If you know me, one genre that I typically despise are romantic comedies. I despise them primarily because they create unrealistic dating standards and normalize toxic relationships. However, every once and a while, a romantic comedy will come along that I completely vibe with. Not only for its honest look at romance, but for its quiet charm. David Freyne’s latest feature, Eternity had that right amount of romantic charm that makes it one of the most insightful looks at love since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In the afterlife, recently departed souls have one week to decide where they wish to spend eternity. It could be in the rugged wilderness of the mountains, the beautiful beaches of Hawaii, or in Paris where everyone speaks English but keeps their French accent. Whatever your choice, it won’t be as difficult as Joan’s (Elizabeth Olsen) decision, who has to choose between Larry (Miles Teller), the man she built her life with, and Luke (Callum Turner), her first love who died during the Korean War.
What first struck me about Eternity, outside of its colorful and vibrant cinematography and production design, was how smart it was. It marries the high-concept philosophy of The Good Place with the aching, intimate emotionality of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The result is something that is unexpectedly tender and poignant. Joan is left with an impossible choice: where and who she will spend eternity with. Larry, the man she has spent her life with, has seen plenty of ups and downs, trials and tribulations as they navigated through life together. They know how each other works and how to push each other’s buttons to the point of hair pulling, but they still love each other. Luke on the other hand, is a man she never got to spend her life with as he was taken from her only a few months into their marriage. Over the decades, she has secretly wondered and fantasied about what their lives could have looked like. Or, perhaps she chooses no one and does eternity on her own. As Joan looks back on her life, she’s forced to confront the truth that love, in all its forms, is as much about loss as it is about connection.
If there really is an afterlife, then this would have to be every widow’s worst nightmare: being asked to choose, for all eternity, between the two people you’ve loved most. And yet Eternity takes that impossible, haunting premise and wraps it in something tender, romantic, and surprisingly human rather than a typical melodramatic love triangle. Never falling into cliches, Eternity feels refreshingly sincere. Through Joan’s eyes we see the fragile beauty of connection, the quiet aches of nostalgia and the impossible weight of choosing between the life you lived and the one you never got to have. As she looks back on her past, both Larry and Luke try to remind her why she fell in love with them in the first place.
Eternity’s exploration of the messiness and contradictory emotions of long-term love, is what makes it so honest and charming. It captures the complexities of relationship from the comforts and frustrations of familiarity to the bittersweet allure of what could have been with a gentle, yet whimsically witty tone. While I do wish the film was more philosophically deep, you can’t help but be charmed by the performances from Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner. Whose performances and chemistry deliver something insightful, tender and thought-provoking.
Overall, Eternity ended up being one of my biggest surprises at TIFF. I walked in expecting a standard, sentimental rom-com and walked out with something far more thoughtful. A smart, emotionally resonant exploration of love, memory, and what it means to choose someone forever. It’s a film that stays with you, not because of grand gestures or sweeping romance, but because it understands the quiet, complicated beauty of simply loving someone across a lifetime and, maybe, eternity.
My Rating: B+
Coming to theaters November 14th
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