Joyce Glasser reviews Eternity (December 5, 2025) Cert. 15, 114 mins. In cinemas
“Eternity is long; especially toward the end.” This quote has been attributed to Woody Allen among others, and long before writer-director David Freyne’s Eternity was released.
If the attribution is contested, only a witty, film buff like Allen would have in mind that sinking feeling when, 45 minutes into a film, you realise it’s going nowhere it hasn’t been. Freyne (Dating Amber) has delivered a hybrid rom-com and after-life movie with a talented cast and striking visual look, but not enough wit or imagination to go the distance.
Married for 67 years, cranky Larry Cutler (Barry Primus), a loving husband and ordinary but dependable family man, is being dragged in protest to a family “gender-reveal” party by his wife Joan, (Betty Buckley). Joan is steeling up to tell their offspring and their respective families that she has terminal cancer.
At the party, the prospect of a baby brings out the memories and a family photograph album. But the first image in the album is of Joan in the early 1950s with her dashing first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War shortly after their marriage. Larry chokes on a pretzel and dies.
Larry “wakes up” to find himself at The Junction, which looks like a big hotel complex on top of a train station. But Larry, now played by Miles Teller, is 35, because in this version of the afterlife people appear how they looked in the happiest year of their life. And of course very few people, especially in Hollywood romcoms, are happier at 65 than at 35.
In Freyne’s world, the crowds of souls, looking, talking and acting just as they did in life, spend a week in the hotel before being sent on their chosen afterlife journey. For those with no imagination, there are packages. Options range from Celebrity World and Casino World to Capitalist World, Spice World, Paris Land, and Eternal Spring. You could also try Weimar World (without the Nazis) or Smokers’ World because you can’t die twice.
There to guide you through this emotional, daunting process are Afterlife Coordinators, whose real function is to provide the film’s comic relief, which is not forthcoming. Ryan (John Early), an obviously sensitive, gay extrovert, fights for Joan’s corner while Anna (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) takes Larry’s, albeit losing patience with him along the way.
The snag is that once you’ve chosen your afterlife, you can never change your mind.
This presents a problem for Joan as she has two husbands at the Junction with whom she might wish to spend eternity.
Each husband offers a totally different lifestyle and different destination. One husband is that compelling unknown and the other is the much less romantic, Mr Familiar. In recognition of her plight, the Afterlife Coordinators give Joan extra time to drive herself batty choosing.
And that’s the elaborate, mildly absorbing set-up. In the rest of the film the “eternity” genre changes to a “love triangle” genre. Think of Gone with the Wind, Brief Encounter, Twilight, Brooklyn and 2023’s magnificent weepie, Past Lives – or better yet, don’t.
Those were dramas and it’s hard to sustain the comedy here, when the handsome, athletic husband, unencumbered by children, died young in war before his annoying habits and shortcomings could remove him from his pedestal.
But the real problem is that we know that after the set-up, the whole film will be about who Joan will choose – even if she might not be deciding on the destination. That she could always choose to go off on her own, or with a girlfriend, to Belle Epoque Paris to become a writer or an artist’s muse is only toyed with briefly towards the end.
The “who will she choose” motif becomes repetitious and there are no sub-plots or surprise revelations to keep things moving along.
And it’s more of a lazy than a clever plot twist when Joan is able to try before she buys, in defiance of the strict prohibition against changing your mind.
