In an afterlife where souls have one week to decide where to spend eternity, Joan is faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with and her first love, who died young and has waited decades for her to arrive.

‘Eternity’ is a romantic comedy built around a neat high-concept setup: an elderly husband (Larry, played by Miles Teller) and wife (Joan, played by Elizabeth Olsen) die within a week of each other and reunite in the afterlife, only for their plans for “eternity” to be complicated by the sudden appearance of her first husband (Luke, played by Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War and has been waiting for her for over sixty years. From there, the film plays out as a love triangle in a quirky setting, using the afterlife as a space where old choices and unresolved feelings resurface as Joan is forced to make a choice between them.

There’s something pleasantly old-fashioned about the film, recalling the kind of romantic comedies that once filled multiplexes in the 1990s, with clear screwball influences in its pacing and dialogue. It’s more enjoyable than I expected it to be, helped by smart world-building that establishes its rules quickly and then has fun pushing against them, without getting bogged down in explanation.

The performances are consistently enjoyable across the board, with the leads leaning into the heightened situations while keeping the emotions grounded, and strong supporting turns from Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early adding extra comic texture. The script is genuinely funny more often than not, finding humour in both the absurdity of the premise and the very human messiness of love carried across decades, and while ‘Eternity’ doesn’t reinvent the genre, its confidence and warmth make it a surprisingly satisfying throwback.

Rating: 4/5

Directed By: David Freyne

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, John Early, Barry Primus, Betty Buckley and Olga Merediz 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt24950660/