This review contains spoilers for “Eternity.”
“Love isn’t just one happy moment, it is a million. It is bickering in the car and supporting someone when they need it. And it is growing together and looking after each other,” said by Joan Cutler in Eternity.
The new film Eternity is bringing back the 2000s rom-com style to the movie industry with the same emotional elements that defined that era such as an idealist love story, high-concept twists and its focus on emotional vulnerability over sarcasm, unlike the modern rom-coms.
“Eternity” was released on Nov. 2025 directed by David Freyne, who co-wrote the film with Pat Cunnane. It is a rom-com about an afterlife where souls have one week to decide where to spend their eternity. The film stars Elizabeth Olsen as Joan Cutler, Callum Turner as Luke and Miles Teller as Larry Cutler, who form a love triangle to win Joan’s love as she must choose between her 65-years-old husband or her first young love.
The movie begins with 65-years-old Joan and Larry arguing on their way to their grandchild’s gender reveal party. In the celebration, Larry randomly chokes on a pretzel and dies. Then he enters the “junction,” an afterlife waystation where recently deceased souls spend a week choosing their permanent afterlife. Larry arrives as the youthful version of himself, where he had been the happiest. Exploring the place, he waits for his wife to meet him to spend his eternity with her.
No more than a week after Larry’s death, Joan dies because of cancer and meets him at the purgatory-like train station, but something unexpected happens. Joan’s first husband, Luke, who died in the Korean War, had been waiting 67 years for Joan to spend his eternity with her.
The situation gets complicated and to make her decision, Joan decides to try a week in the “ideal” eternity with each one of her husbands. In Luke’s eternity, he and Joan lived in a cabin in the mountains; Luke was very romantic and fun, which reminded her of the fun young love they once had. On the other hand, during Larry’s eternity, they both spent their days at the beach, where there was conflict and they argued a lot.
Tempted by youthful love, Joan chooses her eternity with Luke, because in the afterlife she appeared as her younger and happier self with him and Larry, with his selfless love, supported her decision. Later on, she realizes that he only represented her young years, when she didn’t have to worry about aging or the daily struggles. While the life she built with Larry was more meaningful as their love was dedicated and built over decades, he loved her through her ups and downs, even when all she wanted to do was argue sometimes.
Larry and Joan’s love story is intense, emotional and fated, very similar to the movies The Notebook and 13 Going on 30, in which love is portrayed as something larger than life, in this case eternal. With its use of surreal elements like the afterlife it mirrors 2000s rom-coms, which often had memory loss, time jumps or body swaps.
Another key throwback is the focus on emotional vulnerability over sarcasm. In “Eternity,” Larry was willing to wait an eternity for Joan and their love trespassed all of their conflicts which reflects the same tone of the older films, differing it from the new rom-coms that rely on cheesiness and humor.
As a big hopeless romantic fan of rom-coms, “Eternity” has become one of my favorites because it is charming, humorous and emotional with a message that changed my whole perspective on love. I demonstrated perfectly how real relationships aren’t flawless and grow through mistakes, difficulties and change and that at the end of the day, real love is all about conscious effort, growth and choosing the same person over and over, even in eternity.
