A24‘s second major rom-com of the year, after the success of (the better) Materialists, is as they say in the business “high concept.”
Set in the afterlife, as many a movie has already been there-done that, Eternity from Irish director David Freyne, working with a Black List script by Patrick Cunnane and having a co-writing credit, struck me as sort of a cross between Albert Brooks’ brilliant Defending Your Life and the delightful 1976 Brazilian film Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (later the inspiration for the labored 1982 English-language remake Kiss Me Goodbye). At its heart is this love triangle in which a woman is asked to choose which husband to spend eternity with, is unapologetically old fashioned, and even a throwback to sparkling comedies of Hollywood’s golden eras like The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn or even another Grant vehicle, The Bishop’s Wife, which also starred Loretta Young and David Niven. Ah, if only these great stars were around they probably would be doing Eternity, and that might have made this all work better than it does.
Instead we will settle for Miles Teller, who plays Larry Cutler, a loyal husband to his wife of 67 years Joan (Elizabeth Olsen), who lays in bed with terminal cancer. Unexpectedly though, it is Larry who dies first (Barry Primus and Betty Buckley play the current-day versions). Next thing we know Larry, now back to his prime age-wise as everyone does when they get to the afterlife, is on a train to the Junction, a bustling portal and first stop to determine where one, and with whom, will spend eternity.
Meeting Anna (Da’Vine Joyce Randolph), the coordinator assigned to him, Larry in pining for Joan and not ready to take any of the endless advertising ploys promising a dream existence beyond. And in fact Joan does soon show up and the two reunite. But from there it really gets complicated when they come face to face with Luke (Callum Turner), a bartender who has been working in the Junction for 67 years, about the same amount of time Larry and Joan were married, and the minute she sets eyes on him there is magic. Luke has refused to choose his final eternity destination all this time, waiting for Joan, who he married shortly before going off to fight in the Korean War and being killed in action in 1953. Theirs was a life together cut off in its infancy, but still the flame burns bright.
From this point let the sparring between reliable Larry and dashing Luke, the first true love of Joan. In the Junction you only get a week to decide where you will spend eternity or else, as Luke has done, you are banished to be a working stiff there until you do take the leap. The crux of this tale is now an agonizing decision that Joan has to make, egged on by her rather flighty coordinator Ryan (John Early), who is competing against Anna to make this all work. Eventually an exception is made for them. Joan will get a week with Luke, and then a week with Larry, at Mountain World in order to make her decision. Does she pick the man she made a life with for almost seven decades, with kids and grandkids? Or does she go for her first love that so tragically got cut off before ever really starting?
It is an agonizing choice as the broad middle of the film is about watching this all play out. Eternity, in fact, has a great start, even if its similarities to past films are quite obvious to cinephiles (particularly the superior Defending Your Life, which had moving buses rather than trains in its afterlife central station and a Michael Gore music score that sounds eerily like the one David Fleming has created for this film). The premise here is a soulful one, and the setup promises a lot of fun, but as it goes back and forth between Larry and Luke, with Joan unable to choose, the movie bogs down, the air going out this balloon until it feels like an eternity to get her decision. At its Sunday night world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival you could feel the (normally friendly) TIFF crowd eating it all up at the start, but by the middle falling quite silent. The film does recover, and the ending works, but the thin premise requires a lot more to keep it from dragging the way it does.
This is the kind of lighthearted rom-com (and by the way I happen to love this genre and always have) that requires a lot of wit in the writing, and Cunnane’s script does have some of it (for a while at least), especially with any scene Randolph is in. A promising bit involving Dean Martin goes nowhere, and some other comic setups, as with the proprietor of Mountain World, just lay there.
Acting-wise the ideal cast for this kind of fluff is unfortunately dead themselves, and Brad Pitt and George Clooney are too old at this point. Teller, the best of the triangle, is well cast here and does everything he can to make it all work, and Olsen certainly does well too but she is not Kate Hepburn. Who is? Turner, a fine British actor I really liked in The Boys in the Boat and Masters of the Air, didn’t quite cut it for me, at least for a character described as a dreamboat. His chemistry with Olsen just isn’t really there and instead of being the love of her life he actually looks like he could be just as comfortable playing a serial killer. But then Cary Grant is busy right now — in the afterlife.
Where the movie really pops is with the bright and fun production design of this wild environment by Zazu Myers, and the sparkling colorful cinematography of Ruairi O’Brien. Freyne’s fantasy afterlife is well-captured on screen, but the movie itself could use a little tightening before it opens for the holiday season November 26.
Producers are Tim White and Trevor White.
Title: Eternity
Festival: Toronto (Gala Presentations)
Distributor: A24
Release date: November 26, 2025
Director: David Freyne
Screenwriters: Patrick Cunnane, David Freyne
Cast: Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Barry Primus, Betty Buckley
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 1 hr 52 mins
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