REEL | 'Eternity' Chooses A Bittersweet Afterlife x TIFF 2025

"There's nothing more powerful than emotional blackmail."

Toronto International Film Festival

Eternity, director David Freyne's high-concept romantic comedy fantasy, stars Miles Teller and Elizabeth Olsen as a long-married, elderly couple who meet up in the afterlife to spend the titular rest of their time together, that is, until the latter's first husband, the comically handsome Callum Turner, suddenly reappears after waiting sixty-seven years in limbo after his own death in the Korean War. It's an amusing premise that sets up a killer love triangle to ultimately mine a bittersweet romance about how and who we choose to spend the rest of our lives with.

Shot in Vancouver, the film spends most its time in a transitional plain of existence, called the "Junction," between death and one's chosen "eternity" preceeded by a fun prologue featuring Teller and Olsen's Larry and Joan right before their deaths. Soon, they are joined by each of their "afterlife coordinators," the highly comical Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early, whose high-energy demeanours sparkle off each other superbly.

There are more than a few well-thought-out details to Pat Cunnane and Freyne's script, both laying out the rules of this afterlife while leaving holes for our characters to poke through, allowing for maximized dramatic results in its romantic conflict. However, there's so much focus on Joan's ultimate decision about who to spend her eternity with and how this unfolds. This resolution eventually gets predictably messy thanks to her cosmic indecision, needlessly stretching the film's climax.

Teller, Olsen, and Turner make for a compelling trio of displaced lovers tasked with an impossible situation as Freyne expertly uses grounded, real-life emotional experiences on Earth to inform the comedic tension of his characters in death. It's seldom not clever in its exploitation of romantic feelings beyond our ideals of marriage, family, the grieving process, and second chances at ordinary love. Eternity chooses its laughlines wisely.

Eternity premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Gala Presentations program.


More | YVArcade / Indiewire / That Shelf