Forever the Same
David Freyne’s afterlife rom-com messes with the formula in the right way until it caves under the weight of convention.
Eternity
Director: David Freyne • Writers: Pat Cunnane, David Freyne
Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early
USA • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong November 27 • IIB
Grade: C+
On the surface, David Freyne’s Eternity is a novel spin on the tired rom-com. And if you don’t know it, full disclosure: I hate rom-coms. But in fairness Freyne and co-writer Pat Cunnane are at least making an effort to juice a tired genre whose success or failure is fundamentally trapped in and by its conventions. There’s a firm line in the sand between those who can roll with those conventions and those who can’t, but if you’re in the former camp, Eternity messes with the love triangle trope by making the central woman’s (it’s always a cis woman) choice between the two dudes asking for her forever to be just that. Forever. When elderly Larry and Joan Cutler are separated by death, his first by heart attack at one of their kids’ baby gender reveal (ugh, enough) party, hers later by terminal cancer, that standard “Let’s be together forever” takes a turn by reuniting the couple in the afterlife or purgatory, or limbo, or whatever – okay it’s called the Junction – forcing Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), to choose who to spend all eternity with. Fortunately, in death they’ve flipped back in time and look like their young, fit selves.
Even I’ll admit there’s something refreshing in the sky high concept, the infinity of it all adding some stakes to Joan’s decision, as does the sprinkling of do-over wish fulfilment baked into the story. As demonstrated in the opening frames, Joan and Larry bicker like an old married couple (because they are), but Joan and “the one that got away” have a real spark. That she seriously considers taking her chance this time, to hell with Larry, is the meat of the story, which makes the conventional (there’s that word again), acceptable, “correct” ending all the more disappointing.
Which white guy to pick?
Again, Eternity at least tries. The first of two dudes Joan has to choose between is the reliable, already-been there-done-that Larry (Miles Teller), with his constant complaining, borderline misanthropic barbs and general negativity – but heart of gold. The second is the dashing Luke (Callum Turner, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore), Joan’s first husband who didn’t get away so much as died in the Korean War. He was her first love, they had real chemistry, and he effortlessly rocks his army uniform while being more of an optimist than Larry. Also? He waited 50 years in the afterlife for her. Major points scored for Luke, as Larry left a message with his afterlife coordinator Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolp, The Holdovers) to tell Joan where he went when she got there and come catch up. Eternity unfolds in something like central holding, or temp housing, giving new arrivals time to 1) adjust to being dead and 2) decide where to spend their beautiful forever. Larry took off when his lease was up; Luke took job bartending to wait. Awwwww.
The “com” part of this rom-com is rooted in the rivalry between the two men, as well as the fractious romance between their afterlife coordinators, of whom Ryan (John Early) is Joan’s, but mostly in the jokes embedded in the selection of “worlds” available to retire in. Larry’s considering Beach World, Luke likes the look of Mountain World. Joan at one point toys with Space World with Karen (Olga Merediz), Joan’s neighbour in life who hated Larry. There’s a Capitalist World, which most of us just call “Hell”. The winner is Man-Free World, which is booked solid. No duh.
The missed opportunity in Eternity is that there isn’t a bad guy here, which recalls John Crowley’s rom-dram Brooklyn. Freyne – he of the zombie drama (!) The Cured – and first-timer Cunnane hint at Larry’s fears that he may be the fall-back option when the first pick war hero that came before him is taken off the board. But never dives into that anxiety, nor does it explore Luke’s, who quite naturally resents the long life, with a family, that Larry got to have with Joan and that he missed – for no fault of his. He didn’t run away. He didn’t chicken out. He died. It opens the door to make this a more thoughtful rom-com about love, destiny, commitment and soul mate bullshit (sorry) that other films often don’t, but unfortunately never goes through it.
But what we want our movies to be is entirely different from what they are, and in its defence Eternity has some tremendous Technicolor sets and a truly imaginative afterlife way station space by production designer Zazu Myers (My Old Ass), that distracts from the limpid comedy, forced acknowledgement of “other” kinds of romance all the straight wypipo here have no time for (polyamory, LGBTQ+ relationships, interracial relationships and so on) and flimsy characters. Olsen does what she can to keep Joan from tipping over the precipice into Woman Who Sucks At Life And Can’t Make Up Her Tiny Mind Because Boys territory, but in the end succumbs to Eternity’s eternally powerful conventions.