Eternity Review: A Return of the Type of Rom-Com ‘They Don’t Make Anymore’

Joan has a problem. Despite experiencing what is by all accounts an idyllic lifetime of memories and love with her husband Larry these past 65 years, this grandmother and great-grandmother has lived long enough to see Larry pass away—and herself as well in the span of a week. That was the easy part though. The tricky bit came afterward when, upon reaching the other side, she discovered Larry waiting for her… as well as her first husband who died 67 years earlier, Luke.

Such is the disarmingly quirky high-concept of David Freyne’s Eternity, a romantic comedy the likes of which we regularly lament they don’t make anymore. Indeed, with its afterlife shenanigans and screwball flirtations, Eternity feels like a deliberate throwback to the romances of yesteryear that Joan, Luke, and Larry might have all seen in their halcyon youth (not together, of course). Freyne and his co-writer Patrick Cuanne appear determined to channel the gentler rom-com stylings of films like Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait or Joseph Mankiewicz’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with this one, which is impressive since the core theme remains (ahem) fairly eternal: can you have more than one love of your life? And if so, what counts more, passion or longevity?

These are the questions which confront Eternity’s central love triangle of a wife and her surplus of spouses. In truth, the film is told primarily from the second husband’s point-of-view—or “the current husband” as Larry defensively insists on being called. While played with bemusing crankiness by Barry Primus in Eternity’s opening scene (opposite the Betty Buckley as Joan), Lar spends the rest of the movie looking a whole lot like Miles Teller. His AC (afterlife coordinator) Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) explains this is because when we die, we revert to the self-image we had when we were the happiest in life. It’s why there are a whole lot of little boys on the other side, but as Anna drolly notes, “not a lot of teenagers.”

It is also why Joan becomes Elizabeth Olsen. For both Larry and Joan, death is a chance of being restored to the spritely bodies they used to take for granted, and a chance for Olsen and Teller to both practice the cognitive dissonance inherent with portraying old souls in young bodies. However, in the case of Luke, the long lost war hero husband played by a hunky Callum Turner, it is a different scenario. He is a young man permanently frozen in time during his death in his early 20s, and a moment when he was a newlywed shipped off to Korea. 

He presents Joan with the first part of the aforementioned difficult choice(s). Because in addition to having ostensibly the two loves of her life expecting her to spend eternity with them, Joan must also pick what that eternity will look like beyond the plus one. As it turns out, death is neither pearly gates or fire and brimstone; it’s a way station surrounded by the recently deceased and bureaucratic coordinators who hurriedly attempt to rush folks off to the most convenient “eternity” for them. That might be an alleged paradise in the mountains, as is Luke and maybe Joan’s wont, or it could be the more popular seaside eternity at the beach (which sounds great to Larry). The trick, however, is that whatever “eternity” you pick, you must stay there. Forever.

From front to back, Eternity is unapologetically a love triangle that begins and ends with which husband (if indeed either) Joan will select to spend countless lifetimes with. There’s even an amusing irony that it could be conceived as a spiritual sequel to the most famous movie romance of the last 30 years: Titanic. (Remember, Rose went and had a life with children and grandchildren after Jack, but runs right back to the boy she knew for three days in 1912 after she dies.)

Yet the appeal of the movie is the far more human and communal aspects with which it considers what it means to be alive, or in love. The contrast between Luke and Larry is the difference between young love’s passion and a perhaps more practical but tested connection that can span years and decades. On a certain level, this makes Larry the easier character to root for, despite the movie effectively casting Teller against type as a nebbish square who favors sweater vests (which conveniently make it easier to hide six-pack abs). Turner’s Luke, by comparison, is a matinee idol who looks as if he stepped out of a Times Square VJ Day photograph.

Freyne and Cuanne’s screenplay recognizes the juxtaposition, but never sinks to making Luke an antagonist, or certainly a cad, nor Larry a punching bag. The story in fact likes to poke holes in the memory of the “one that got away” when audiences discover how Luke spent 67 years at a glorified airport. However, there is sympathy for both parties, and even more so for Joan. In this way, it is really Olsen’s movie, and she gives a quiet dignity to Joan’s predicament, avoiding anything that could be mistaken for sketch comedy arch or outrageous.

For some, Eternity’s refusal to heighten the jokes with gags or caricature (at least among the core triangle) could be a detriment, but it reminded me of a simpler more character-based understanding of humor, as well as of life. And it also allows Eternity to go big in the margins, whether that is via Randolph’s afterlife coordinator having her own curious tension with the AC repping Joan, or the fact that this bureaucratic vision of death looks as if Beetlejuice’s afterlife had been designed by Ken Adam.

The way that the film also introduces alternative visions of niche “eternities” you could select from—including names like “Satanism World,” “No Men World,” and “Weimar Germany with 100% Less Nazis!”—lets Eternity’s funny flag fly, all while the film keeps mostly a sympathetic eye toward a lose-lose scenario for Joan.

It is thus not a spoiler to say the third act of Eternity takes some twists that turn toward the dramatic and bittersweet. But the movie never loses its affection for all parties involved, and in the process makes for an affectionate throwback to the type of rom-coms that reward a revisit.

Eternity is in theaters now.