2025 has been a year of intensity. With heavy-hitters like One Battle After Another, Hamnet, Sentimental Value, House of Dynamite, and The Long Walk all offering some form of existential dread, David Freyne’s Eternity, a film about life after death, is nothing less than a breath of fresh air full of love, laughter, and warmth.
After Larry and Joan, who have been married for over 30 years, die, they find themselves in the afterlife, with a week to decide where to spend eternity. The only thing standing in the way of Larry spending eternity with his true love is her first husband, who passed away before Joan and Larry met. He’s been waiting to reunite with Joan. What follows is an emotional exploration of a love triangle featuring two hilarious supporting performances and a reminder of the privilege of growing old.
Miles Teller leads the ensemble as Larry, a grumpy, simple man who wants to do nothing but sit on the beach. His wife, Joan (played beautifully by Elizabeth Olsen), faces a more complicated week right after dying when she suddenly is faced with both loves of her life. Callum Turner completes this mess as Luke, Joan’s first husband, the young heart-stopper who died during the war.
Teller brings an instantly addictive charm with an almost underdog quality, making you want to root for this old grump. Turner is Teller’s opposite, playing into his ‘pretty boy’ persona. Despite ultimately being outacted by Teller, he finds some footing to muster genuine laughs. Together, the two have more chemistry than they do with Olsen. Polyamory anyone?
Olsen absolutely nails the drama of Eternity. While all three performers find the fun and goofy moments of the story with ease, Olsen digs deep and really dives into the core of this romantic comedy — the ultimate, difficult choice that has to be made. Joan must decide who to spend the rest of her afterlife with, finding pain and confusion as she tries to determine which relationship means more to her: the potential-perfect life with a man from her youth or the not-so-perfect life with the man she built over the decades. Olsen expertly captures Joan’s fear of making the wrong decision, creating empathy for not only her character but for the two foolish boys she’s trying to choose between. It’s a relatively common trope of choosing between two men, but the stakes here are elevated when the choice is for, well, eternity.
The concept of ‘eternity’ in the film is undoubtedly one of the more creative ways to visualize life after death. Manifesting as a train station and transitional hotel/convention center, people spend a week exploring different ‘eternities’ like salesmen choosing vendors at a trade show, helped along the way by afterlife coordinators — people who decided to work instead of entering their eternities. Admittedly, the logistics of this nine-to-five-style life beyond the grave raise more questions than answers, but I found it better not to ask questions and simply buy into this reality.
While our core three performers offered intense, emotional, and entertaining renditions of people facing the great beyond, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early as Larry and Joan’s afterlife coordinators are the true soul of this comedy. Randolph proved her emotional prowess in her Oscar-winning performance in The Holdovers (2023), but here she proves a range difficult for most. Her timing, matter-of-fact tone, and dynamic with every performer she interacts with lead to nothing but stomach-aching laughter. Early takes a back seat in the supporting cast but plays off Randolph well, making me excited when both were on screen.
For a romantic comedy, Eternity is fresh and well-acted, balancing drama and absurdity. The film slowly loses itself, though, in the second and third acts as it takes one too many liberties with fake endings, melodramatic ‘too-lates,’ and on-the-nose thematic resolutions. Written by Freyne along with Patrick Cunnane (a newcomer to screenwriting with only 2016’s Designated Survivor as his other major writing project), the slightly bloated ending to Eternity made me feel like the film wasn’t quite committed to one ending, opting to explore too many avenues that give the audience more and more to digest. Nonetheless, the film is an earnest reminder that love and loss go hand in hand in both life and the afterlife.
Without breaking every bound of the romantic comedy genre, Eternity is a lighthearted palette cleanser in a year defined by tears, trauma, violence, and existentialism. For a film about dying, I found myself smiling most of the time! But it isn’t all fun, bringing in moments of honest reflection on love, loss, and the idea of a soulmate. Ultimately, it reminds audiences that love isn’t perfect, there is privilege in pain, and the perfect life after death looks different for everyone. But, still, isn’t it wonderful that we get to live?
Review Courtesy of Sara Ciplickas
Feature Image Credit to A24 via TIFF and IndieWire