"Eternity" is a Love Triangle with No Clear Winners
The afterlife is plagued with choice (must be Hell) and its fatigue burden weighs on our trio of romantic leads.
In Eternity (2025), directed by David Freyne, Elizabeth Olsen (whose turn as The Scarlet Witch in WandaVision still tops my list - more on that further down) plays June, a woman confronted with an impossible choice: spend eternity (yes, literally) with her first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), the “gorgeous and perfect” war hero invoked at least a hundred times in the film, or with Larry, played by Miles Teller, who’s less conventionally appealing and far more kvetchy, at least on the surface.
The ACs (afterlife coordinators) shepherd the recently dead into their chosen worlds while doubling as comedic sidekicks. With Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) and John Early (Search Party) as our beloved ACs delivering performances that only occasionally feel phoned-in, they keep audiences locked in for the laughs amid an otherwise weightier love triangle.
The Set-Up and the Not So Perfect
In the afterlife system, the rules dictate that you have 7 days to choose your afterlife. Once you decide, you’re locked in. Leave, and you risk being caught and exiled to “the void,” a place of endless darkness. But for June, the question isn’t where she’ll spend eternity. It’s who she’ll spend it with…And that’s where I think the film could have been made some more interesting choices.
The binary of choosing one love over another feels like a dilemma a younger version of June would struggle with far more than her present-day self in Eternity. After all, the physical age you’re assigned in the afterlife is meant to reflect the happiest point in your life, hence Larry and June appearing youthful again, while Luke is forever frozen at the age he was when he died, suspended in the glow of his final moments with June before being shipped off to war. But their mental age reflects their age at the time of death, with all their memories of a lifetime intact.
I found it quietly depressing that Larry and June died in old age, yet their “happiest moments” — the ones that define their afterlife forms — were locked in their youth. It lands as a pretty grim commentary on the arc of a life. As Jack Nicholson’s wonderfully cantankerous Melvin Udall might ask… was this really as good as it gets? I hope not and I think the film makes enough of a case that it’s not. It’s more of a question mark meets exclamation mark footnote.
Another grim layer, one that clearly aims for a facetious capitalist takedown but doesn’t quite stick the landing, is the holding area where the newly dead spend their seven days. The place looks like a faded, 1980s Las Vegas tradeshow floor, complete with vendors hawking their afterlife “products”: Man Free World (currently at capacity), Queer World, Studio 54 World (my personal hell — too many drugs, too much hedonism), Old Testament World, Infantilization Land, Capitalist World…the list is endless. The most jarring of all is “1930s Weimar Germany — 100% Nazi Free,” a choice that aims for edgy satire but instead lands with an unsettling thud, especially as the commercial features a bondage clad person. I still can’t put my finger on it entirely, but it rubs me in all the wrong ways.
When No One is the Obvious Choice, Choose Yourself
Setting those elements aside, the film truly peaks in the tender, lightly comedic exchanges between Larry and June. Through their barbs, inside jokes, and perfectly timed one-liners, we see the kind of shorthand that can only form over a lifetime shared with someone - the comfort between them is so palpable it practically radiates off the screen. They make us root for them, even if only in the sense that they built a real, imperfect, deeply lived-in life together, one shaped and strengthened by weathering the hard moments side by side. By contrast, Luke and June’s romance, lovely as it is, never had the chance to evolve past the intoxicating blur of young love.
The “impossible” choice Joan faces starts to feel a lot less impossible once Ryan (John Early) drops his single best piece of advice: Choose yourself. (Thank you!!) In other words, use this bizarre limbo to figure out what you want, preferably without two men panting at your heels. Of course, the guys are absolutely suffocating her, and Ryan is secretly rooting for Luke anyway, so there’s that to contend with.
Joan does take his advice to a degree, but not wanting to be alone, she bolts off to find her friend Susan, who remains in her 70s because her happiest stretch of life was the brief period she lived openly as a lesbian before retreating back into the closet. Susan becomes the film’s unexpected voice of reason, and honestly, someone I wish had far more screen time.
Yet when Joan finally declares she’s choosing herself (over the two suitors) it’s really just choosing what Susan would want - 60s Paris. Memo to Susan - There was A LOT of civil unrest then, babe. Still, I would have loved the film to end there: Joan on the train, Larry calling out to her from outside the window, completely unaware, too absorbed in the life yet to come—her next iteration, where she gets to live as a young, single woman armed with all the wisdom of a grown-ass adult.
Like, who wouldn’t want that???
In Short
Past Lives by Celine Song tackles the love triangle with more direct gravitas than Eternity, offering no clear winners but conveying that sometimes practicality gives way to the weight of life decisions with a more cohesive, better developed arc than Eternity does. Broadcast News is another example that came to mind: Albert Brooks plays a well-meaning, slightly nerdy nebish of a suitor pursuing Holly Hunter’s character, who is only interested in the more conventionally attractive go-getter, played by William Hurt. That said, the film still manages to show us the nuances and heartbreaks in Hunter’s romantic decisions. At the end of the day, while they may not all get to spend eternity with each other in this life, we get the why of it all. Eternity presents the why but makes a far more interesting case for why Joan needs to try something different and chart a new course minus the lovers.
Elizabeth Olsen’s gift for portraying tragic, romantic figures with depth and an approachable, omniscient fragility is on full display here. That said, the script gives her less to work with than WandaVision, which I HIGHLY recommend. In WandaVision, her scenes with Paul Bettany as Vision are tender, wholesome, and capture the spirit of a woman who has been through it all, but emerges with a love arc that is far more compelling.
For more on that, scroll down on this piece:
Skip it? See it?
Yes, see it. Wait for it to be available for streaming, though.
Great in depth review. Based on your review I’m not sure this movie would be my cup of popcorn. Sounds like a clever premise that missed the structure, humor, feminism, memo? Also a missed opportunity to show that old age can hold the best days of one’s life.
Loved your review! This was one of the ones I wanted to go watch at TIFF but then my son talked me out of it. I'm sort of glad now that I read your review, but might still watch it when it's available to stream. I'm curious, plus I like all the actors.