One life, two loves and seven days to decide with whom you will spend eternity: this is the idea of ”Eternity”, the film that A24 will release in Spanish cinemas on December 5 and which has arrived in Europe preceded by a positive reception. … It received its premiere at the Toronto festival. With this seemingly light premise, the David Frane-directed film builds a story that delves into an afterlife conceived as a transit space, a station where recently deceased people must choose their final destination from an endless catalog of potential immortality. Far from presenting itself as an exercise in simple imagination, the film combines humor with a meditation on what remains when flesh and blood life is left behind.
Frayn explained that his involvement in the project, as soon as he read the first script by Patrick Coonan, came from an immediate impulse. ““I had an instinctive and emotional reaction to the gist of the story, which made my mind race.”From the first moment, he explained, he imagined El Croce, the central setting in which the film takes place, as “a brutal bureaucratic center hosting chaotic exploratory tourism forever.” As he explained, he was interested in the film becoming “a celebration of love in its many forms,” allowing us to observe “how our idea of love changes over time,” so that the viewer could become immersed in “the impossible choice of a woman divided between two men who, at different times in her life, were everything to her.”
Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner
The interpretation of that woman, Joan, falls to Elizabeth Olsen, who confirmed in a press interview in which ABC participated that this story “is not just a love triangle, because Joan has to make a decision about love that goes beyond the normal framework of time and earthly circumstances,” a hypothesis that requires a balance between nostalgia, uncertainty, and confrontation with what could have been. Olsen explained that she worked with Miles Teller, who plays her longtime husband Larry, who also participated in the interview, on Contrary to the Nature of Life. A marriage that has lived together for decadesThey commented that they both made an effort to show “the natural ease of their relationship, and how well they complemented each other’s way of thinking.”
The other emotional linchpin comes from Callum Turner’s character, Luke, Joan’s first love whose untimely death keeps her waiting on the other side for years. Turner described the film as “a brilliant, visually stunning comedy, in which its characters experience a range of emotions”, and stated that it is “the kind of film that everyone loves, but everyone says no one makes anymore.” His character embodies the enduring power of first love, as remembered by someone who never had the opportunity to prolong it in time.
Frayn explained that for him “it was crucial that, as heartbreaking as the choice was for Joan, there was no right or wrong answer. There are no good guys or bad guys. “I like the idea of the audience debating whether or not their decision is the right one.”.
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For his part, Taylor said that the story caught his attention from the first reading. “Eternity was one of the funniest scripts I’ve ever read, and that excited me,” he said, mentioning that to prepare for the role, he looked at the relationship between his grandparents. “I thought a lot about their relationship, and before starting production, I devoted myself to observing them, trying to capture their dynamic.” He added that what impressed him most was that his grandfather “was always willing to sacrifice himself for his wife,” a trait he carried into Larry’s performance.
Find the tone
When setting the tone, Teller emphasized that although it was a comedy, he did not want it to seem light or trivial in a setting where the characters are faced with, and ponder, decisions of enormous importance. The validity of the love triangle as a narrative device Explaining that it is “nothing new,” and that the conflict between two possible life paths has been present in art for centuries.
For her part, Olsen explained that for the film to be successful, it was necessary to present all the options in a balanced way, convinced that the viewer must feel that there is no clear choice. He also addressed the way the film invites us to think about possible lives through the lens of memory, commenting in a personal tone, saying, “My best moment was when I was 12,” when recalling a particularly happy period of his childhood.
For his part, Vrin realized that the possibility of dealing with this species allowed him to fulfill a long-cherished wish. He explained that “I’ve dreamed all my life of making romantic comedies in the style of Lubitsch, Wilder and Sturges“, and that it was precisely this tradition that allowed him to conceive “Immortality” as a story that combined artifice, humor and emotional background. He also noted the creative freedom that the producers granted him, saying that “they were very kind to invite me to participate as co-writer and director” and that “no matter how strange the ideas I presented or how fundamental the changes were… they supported me with all their might and this gave me extraordinary confidence.”