I told myself that I would not say that “Eternity“Is too long, but is it not always? If not the condition, it is at least the guiding principle behind David Freyne’s sincere, somewhat entertaining and sweet over-drawn Rome-Com, who divides the difference between” After Life “and” defend your life “with her story about a new woman called Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) Forced to choose which of her two men – the ultimate Luke who died in the Korea War (Callum Turner), or the absolute Larry she was married to in the 67 years that followed (Miles Teller) – she would like to go forever in the big beyond.
Each of the fells has its upside (Luke is hot and Larry is comfortable), but undertakes to one of them Up to the end of time Seems like a pretty bleak suggestion. In the same way, none of the Gimmicky themes that Joan is offered to “live in” capitalist world, Studio 54 World, Weimar World, (“Now with 100% less Nazis!” “‘To Death do US Part” is romantic, practical and compensated by the divorce insurance policy. “” To the sun explodes, and then perhaps even further after that “is a wicked prison. Freynes Hyper-Agnostic film May not believe in heaven or hell, but it has some pretty lively ideas about what the latter might look like.
A more ambitious – and less conservative – film may have used this condition to dig a little deeper into the commitments that people make for each other on this deadly coil, but “eternity” is pleased to revolve the idea that life is beautiful and worthwhile because it does not last forever. So much is evident from the moment that Freyne and Pat Cunnane’s high -concept script (a real black list special) first let us into the hyatnic intersection where Souls processes what happened and has seven days to choose their final destinations from a variety of convention bottom. The alternatives range from Bleak to Bleaker, as everything about installation radiates all romance and splendor to shop for a time share. It is enough to make us long for the gender rejection party where Larry suffocated to death on a Kringla; At least it came with the promise of an end.
But the characters of the film are too captured in their love triangle after Mortem to realize that they basically fight over which meal Joan would choose to eat every day of her endless aftermath: her favorite comfort food, or a rare delicacy that she has fantasized about since her last taste of it in 1953. Larry is the first dead person we follow. In the mid-1930s after he first got married. Sweet. The kind of non -described every man who loved to complain even though he went through life without much desire or problem, Larry feels like a guy you would meet in the buffet line on a cruise ship. He is as nice as he is non -description, and the broken but personal afterlife coordinator assigned his case (Da’vine Joy Randolph as Anna) cannot wait to meet and forget her next client.
It changes, and how, when Anna realizes that the intersection’s handsome local bartender is Joan’s first love, and that Joan is the reason why he took a service job in actors rather than choosing a permanent holiday in paradise; Luke has poured beer and cut glasses for more than half a century in the hope that he and Joan can be reunited when she dies. Which, convenient, she does only a few moments before Larry is supposed to board a train for the godly eternity he has chosen for himself (the beach world). Suddenly, and to the great joy for both Anna and her colleague, Ryan (John early), there are some real juicy drama at the intersection. Which one will be Joan to choose, Captain America or the guy whose speed she has had to smell the last six decades? Like a metaphysical riff on Netflix “The Ultimatum”, she will get a test run with both before they have to decide.
“Eternity” does what it can to utilize its hard concept for a heart-managing story about love and longing, but the world-building or the lack of it-always comes in the way of the feeling that Freyne hopes to generate from it. While the film’s three-sided romance is never as artificial as the intersection where so much of it takes place, its angles lose its sharpness under a story that has so much landscape to take care of, and each of its main characters is left to fight an upward fight against the archetype that threatens to define them.
The rollist is a game for the challenge (and fun to look at making the “old people in the A24 -A24 -AKS” thing), although their best efforts are not enough to give “eternity” the emotional maintenance it needs to become more than half -murderous thought exercise. Teller’s Upbeat, Go-With-The-Flow Charm Makes Him Easy to Accept As A Simple Guy Who Just Wants-And Expects-His Afterlife to Resemble The One He Left On Earth, And The Fact That He’s More Of A Leading Man Than A Characer Actor Actor Lends Actor Lends Callum Turner is, like any of US Could Hope to Compete with the Future Mr. Lipa (Someone in the Movie Compares Luke to Montgomery Cliff and Turner channels such as matinees Idol Energi for a tee).
In the meantime, Olsen has the most grateful and important role in the story, but her routine’s routine in the middle of the century is charming enough to make the whole thing feel simple, and the interior she saves from the script makes it only more convincing that two good looking men would fight against each other before from? – Death to be with her forever. While Joan Flip-flops about his feelings more often than John Kerry on the campaign track (a painfully outdated reference that is still a few decades too recently for Larry to use or Luke to understand), her anxiety is enough to anchor the film to something real when it goes between different fantasy worlds. For their part, early and Randolph feel both kept in a less happy way; Much like this talented couple compensates for comedy as “eternity” cannot turn out of its wires (and have solid chemistry to start), you can almost feel that they are suffocated by the schematic nature in a story that has no room for them to cut.
It is a story that is better told by its attitude than with its action – one that really doesn’t go anywhere and still takes the scenic way to get there. In that light, Zazu Myer’s production design probably deserves top invoicing here. We don’t get to see Enough of the Junction to Disabuse Us of the Sense That It’s A Glorified Broadway Backdrop (Complete With Painted Skylines and Cloth Scrims to Indicate Whether It’s Day or Night), but the well-based omt- Didn’t Exist Until Don Draper Invented It as an Advertising Opportunity, Helps Underscore The Idea That Life In Any Realm is Only As Toorable As The People With that you choose to spend it.
“Eternity”, however, has no interest in that type of cynicism, so that it forgets the most logical end – a shared embrace of the void – for another type of forever. In this way, it loses something the film’s prevailing message – that life is beautiful as a result of its brevity and temporary bitterness – in favor of a more digestible morality about the paradises we create for ourselves here on earth. It is a suitable compromise for such a pleasantly unpleasant rom-com; One who is afraid forever, but takes almost as long just to get back where it started.
Rating: C+
“Eternity” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. A24 will release the film in selected theaters on November 14 before expanding on November 26.
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