Title: Eternity
Director: David Freyne
Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early
Where: In theatres near you
Rating: 3 Stars
This film turns the afterlife into a transit lounge of unresolved emotions, bungled choices and retro romance. Larry, expected to outlive his terminally ill wife Joan, instead dies in a snack-related mishap and wakes up in the Junction, an afterlife hub resembling an overcrowded convention centre. Here, the newly deceased must select their ideal forever from themed paradises. Larry, restored to his younger self and guided by an overworked coordinator, is about to pick a shared eternity when Joan arrives, equally disoriented.
Their reunion should be simple, but Joan’s first husband, Luke, the dashing soldier who died in the Korean War, has been waiting in limbo for sixty-seven years. What follows is a gentle absurd standoff between the man who shared her ordinary joys and the man whose love story froze at its most intoxicating point.
The film borrows liberally from afterlife comedies, offering warmth without quite capturing their effortless charm. Its humour is pleasant but uneven, and its imaginative world-building often feels decorative. Yet the central dilemma, choosing between a love interrupted and a love lived, keeps it grounded.
Director David Freyne maintains a breezy tone even as the film drifts toward repetition. The momentum occasionally falters under the weight of conceptual playfulness, but the emotional thread holds firm, giving the film a modest, appealing earnestness.
Actors’ Performance
Miles Teller shoulders the film with a chaotic charm that recalls the nervous energy of a classic screwball lead. His version of Larry, irritable yet deeply sincere, is the film’s beating heart. Opposite him, Da’Vine Joy Randolph emerges as the unexpected powerhouse, infusing her celestial bureaucrat with warmth, wit and the kind of unforced authority that lights up every frame she occupies.
Elizabeth Olsen approaches Joan with a convincing mixture of bewilderment and longing. She suggests a woman torn between two valid loves, though the writing gives her less contour than her abilities deserve. Callum Turner plays the lingering first love with the right amount of polished allure, but the character never fully transcends his symbolic function within the triangle.
Together, the ensemble supplies more conviction than the screenplay occasionally supports, elevating scenes that could otherwise have drifted into airy abstraction.
Music and Aesthetics
The film’s visual grammar leans into clean lines, soft glows and controlled palettes that give the afterlife a gently artificial charm. The design of the various “eternity zones” offers intermittent bursts of comic invention, though one senses the film could have pushed its imagination further. The memory archive, in particular, is a curious blend of quirk and nostalgia, charming but slightly dated in tone.
The music supports the mood without calling attention to itself, favouring unobtrusive melodies over thematic boldness. Together, the aesthetics cultivate a pleasant atmosphere, even if they sometimes feel borrowed from earlier, quirkier eras of cinema.
FPJ Verdict
Overall, Eternity is a lightly philosophical rom-com that offers an amiable exploration of love, memory and the strange choices we carry into the unknown. It is neither as profound as it hopes to be nor as zany as it could be, but it is consistently watchable and intermittently delightful.
.jpg)
