TIFF 2025: Eternity Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

While everyone has their own idea of what happens after we die, the mystery of what awaits us on the other side is a universal curiosity. Directed by rising filmmaker David Freyne, Eternity envisions a world where, after death, every soul must choose where, and with whom, they will spend eternity. Once that choice is made, there’s no turning back. The story begins with an elderly couple, Larry and Joan Cutler, who have raised children and shared a long, loving life together. Though they occasionally get on each other’s nerves, their bond remained strong and enduring.

When Larry unfortunately passes away, he reawakens in the afterlife as a younger version of himself (Teller), and decides to wait for his wife to join him. Once Joan (Olsen) finally passes things, however, take an unexpected turn. Her first husband, Luke (Turner), who died tragically in the Korean war decades earlier, appears and reveals that he has been waiting 67 years for her. Suddenly, June found herself faced with an impossible decision: should she spend eternity with the man she built a life and family with, or with the man she loved deeply but never had the chance to grow old beside? Freyne and co-writer Pat Cunnane treat this situation with immense sensitivity, ensuring that each character feels richly human and that there’s genuine love and heartbreak on all sides. Bringing together three movie stars who are perfectly cast, they each possess unlimited charm, but the script offers them rich, emotionally grounded material that bypasses the typically romantic formula in favor for something much more meaningful.

Teller, in particular, taps back into the raw, vulnerable acting that defined his early work, but with a newfound maturity. Delivering one of the best performances of the year, perhaps the best of his career as Larry, a man set in his ways and struggling to express love as openly as his younger counterpart, Teller embodies a challenging role with grace and depth. He and Olsen bring a lived-in physicality and wisdom to their performances. Olsen is equally outstanding as Joan, delivering some of the film’s most heartbreaking moments as Joan, a woman torn between two people she deeply loves. With Luke, she carries the guilt of having lived an entire life without him, With Larry, she shared that life, growing and changing together, bound by decades of memories and love. Callum Turner is also superb as Larry, portraying a man frozen in time, never having had the chance to experience the modern world or mature within it.

How Eternity constructs and reveals its vision of the afterlife is remarkably inventive, imagining a richly detailed world with its own intricate rules. The production design plays a huge role in bringing that world to life, transforming the waiting area before one’s eternal ascension into a kind of mythological shopping mall. Meanwhile, the supporting cast adds texture and humor throughout, with Da’Vine Joy Randolph delivering a delightful turn as Anna, Larry’s afterlife coordinator. Assigned to help him choose his eternity, she becomes a direct witness of the complicated love triangle, and roots for Larry.

What could easily have been an overly sentimental and weepy film, Eternity is something far more profound and universal. Here, Freyne cements himself as a gifted storyteller, crafting a poignant, beautifully acted meditation on love, memory, and the choices that define us. Despite its fantastical premise, the film feels achingly real, reminding audiences that even in the afterlife, the human heart remains as complicated as ever.

still courtesy of A24

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Tristan French