Eternity Makes Big Promises It Can’t Keep

If we’re lucky in this life, we get to experience love. Platonic, romantic, familial, love comes in many forms, and all of them are a part of what makes life worth living. It’s also a part of what makes up the sheer terror of death—the finality of everything, even love, is terrifying. In Eternity, a new romantic dramedy from director David Freyne, life, love, and death are all potent ingredients that make for a compelling plot. 

In the afterlife, recently deceased Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) must choose between the two loves of her life: Luke (Callum Turner), the dashing young soldier who died early in their romance, or Larry (Miles Teller), Joan’s second husband with whom she had a family and a life with until his demise later in life, choking on a quickly-consumed pretzel before Joan. Once you die, the movie posits, you must choose an eternity to spend it in, with no takebacks and no inter-eternity travel. So Joan is faced with two impossible choices: where to spend her eternity, and with whom? 

Before eternity, there’s The Junction, the chic 1970s-hotel conference version of limbo that people wait in for seven days as they decide where they will end up. Stay any longer, and they have to get a menial job in The Junction, which is what Luke has done for over 60 years as he waits for Joan to arrive. He’s tough competition for Larry, who’s set up as a practical, curmudgeonly foil for the sweeping romance offered by Luke. The performance styles of Turner and Teller work perfectly for their respective roles: Turner gives Luke a dreamy, wounded nature that would fit in seamlessly in a Nicholas Sparks romance, and Teller’s Larry shows his love in more practical ways, focusing on preparing the afterlife so it can suit Joan’s tastes, a kind of devotion that makes up for what he lacks in pure passion. They both make up ciphers of very different kinds of love, and Joan must choose between them. What can last for an eternity? Passionate and fiery love, or consistent and devoted love? 

Olsen as Joan embodies the complicated nature of her character’s emotional state. One minute she’s reveling in the newfound youth of her body (in the afterlife here, your body returns to the age where you were happiest in life), the next, she’s plagued with the impossible choice she must make. Larry tips her off about squatting in their newly young bodies, and she can’t help but let the ease of the action cheer her up in the middle of an impossible situation. Olsen is also able to flip between the two versions of Joan that pop up depending on which of her loves she’s with. There is the soft, wistful longing with Luke, where a glance can convey all the pain of lost time in an instant. And then there is the familiar, warm, bickering with Larry that can only come when you’ve spent over 60 years of your life with someone. Eternity’s performances are great throughout, with Da’vine Joy Randolph and John Early as rival Afterlife Coordinators with a romantic past rounding out the ensemble. 

But the movie falters when trying to bring its post-mortem love triangle together. Chemistry is the key to any believable romance, and definitely to any believable love triangle. So it’s disappointing that the chemistry between our three romantic leads isn’t more convincing. Whenever the boys are alone with Joan, or even when all three of them are together in the same frame, there is a hint of something we’re supposed to believe is transcendental love. Despite the committed work of the actors, there’s something here that just doesn’t click. Love is insisted upon, professed, and explored in the movie, but the feeling itself never breaks through the screen. For your romance to work, the feeling has to be undeniable, filling every frame, spilling out into the auditorium, and making your audience root for the love your characters have for each other. In Eternity, it stays safely on the screen, never quite breaking through to reach us. 

Eternity is not without its bright spots. Chief among them is the delightful world-building baked into the background of every scene in The Junction, allowing the audience to take a glance into all the possible eternities people can choose from. Set up conference-booth style, we are treated to glances at places like “Wine World,” “No Men World,” (so popular they’re on iteration #444), “Beach World,” and more! The possibilities are enticing, and add to the idiosyncratic aesthetic vibe the movie is building throughout. It’s a world that I wish we got to dive into more, but the glimpses we do get are delightful.

Overall, Eternity makes a great effort to convince us of its great love story, but falls just short. The potent ingredients that make up the movie aren’t enough to deliver on all the promises it makes. It could be worse, but the world deserves a romance we want to spend eternity with, not one that just says we should.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider becoming a patron of Hyperreal Film Journal for as low as $3 a month!