A perfect Valentine's Day watch, JOE interviewed the film's Irish director, who expressed interest in a spin-off TV show.

Accessible through Apple TV+, the fantasy rom-com is co-written and directed by Irish filmmaker David Freyne (The Cured, Dating Amber).

It stars Elizabeth Olsen (Wind River) and Miles Teller (Whiplash) as Joan and Larry, a couple who've been married for decades, who pass away within a few days of each other.

The pair awaken as their younger selves in "the hub", a part of the afterlife that is basically a mix of a train station, hotel and travel expo.

There, they are told by their highly bureaucratic "afterlife coordinators" (played by scene-stealers Da'Vine Joy Randolph and John Early) that they can choose from hundreds of options on how they'd like to spend the rest of their eternity.

These eternities range from the more generic - beach world, mountain world or Paris world - to the more specific - including a version of Ireland where the Famine never happened.

Once they choose one of these worlds, however, they must spend the rest of their lives there forever.

Eternity Trailer

Larry assumes Joan wants to spend the rest of her eternity with him.

That said, the appearance of her extremely handsome first husband, Luke (Callum Turner, The Capture), who died in the Korean War and has waited decades for Joan to enter the hub, throws a spanner in the works.

Who will Joan pick to spend eternity with: her first love, who was tragically taken from her, or her second love, with whom she had a stable decades-long marriage?

Upon its release in cinemas last December, JOE called Eternity "a near-perfect mix of rom-com and sci-fi storytelling".

Working from an acclaimed Black List screenplay with a great central hook, Freyne infuses the material with the same winning mix of deep emotion and fun, slightly edgy humour that made Dating Amber such a recent Irish classic.

The movie's vision of the afterlife as a bureaucratic waystation is a witty, visually sumptuous marvel. The sequences set there are absolutely overloaded with hilarious background gags that will make the film a blast to revisit.

But on top of all these fantastical, overtly comedic elements is a very human and relatable story, which explores weighty topics like life, death and love (in many forms) in an offbeat way that still rings true.

The performances are immensely charismatic and likeable, which only serves to make the film's central dilemma all the more gripping and painful, because we know someone is going to get hurt.

While the film, as it nears its conclusion and ramps up the stakes, threatens to overcomplicate its ingeniously simple premise, it still manages to stick the landing.

This is because of the clear affection the creators have for their core ensemble.

Eternity Interview

The film's co-writer and director, David Freyne, came into the JOE studio to talk about his journey from working on Irish indies to making a starry American rom-com with renowned production and distribution company A24.

Eternity began life as a quite different, smaller-in-scale script by Pat Cunnane, an American with Irish heritage who worked as a speechwriter for former US President Barack Obama.

Freyne's agent slipped him Cunnane's initial script, which the Dating Amber director was very taken by.

"I loved the idea of a woman having to choose between her first great love and last great love," he told JOE.

"Sometimes those great ideas are ones that you can't believe hadn't existed before... It was such a beautiful way of exploring what love is to you.

"Immediately when I was reading it, I was just thinking of my own life, my own relationships, my parents, my grandparents, and I was so compelled by it, and I connected to it so much. So that basic premise is what attracted me to it.

"My vision for this afterlife being this tourism expo where you get to choose your eternity, just came to me as I read it. It was one of those weird ones where my vision for it almost came fully formed very, very quickly, which doesn't happen very often, so it was so exciting.

"I immediately had all these ideas of what I wanted to do with it. So [my agent] convinced them to have a meeting with me, and it was before they'd seen any of my other films, and I think they just did it to him as a favour.

"I went in assuming I wouldn't get it, so I just said every issue I had with the script, all the problems, and for some reason, they really liked that.

"They really responded to my take, and Pat himself, who's an incredible person and collaborator, really, really loved my ideas."

We asked Freyne if it was ever difficult to convince A24 that he could execute his vision for Eternity, which takes inspiration from the work of legendary filmmakers like Albert Brooks, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Powell & Pressburger, Preston Sturges and Warren Beatty.

"I thought it would be, and I think at another home, it might have been harder. But A24 came on board really early, before casting, and they really liked my last film [Dating Amber]," he explained.

"They loved the script, and I know I had a lookbook where I laid out how I wanted everything to look, and they just immediately had full confidence, which was not what I expected. It was incredible.

"So yeah, I thought it would be much harder than it was, but also I think tonally it's really similar to Dating Amber. It's a romantic comedy... It's just on a much bigger scale and set in the afterlife."

Elizabeth Olsen and director David Freyne on set

Freyne made a lot of changes to Cunnane's initial script, though he feels the end project is "such a lovely reflection" of both of them.

On the alterations, he explained: "There's a lot of character changes. The ACs [afterlife coordinators] weren't really in there in the same way.

"The ending was completely rewritten, and then just how the junction looks, how the archive tunnels work, all that was kind of my doing.

"I always sent my scripts to Pat first before I sent them to the producers. What I always say is he created a skeleton, and I put the flesh on it.

"It became a real proper collaboration, which is what you want."

We did have to ask if the Famine-free Ireland eternity was Freyne's idea.

"I did write all the eternities. I wrote a lot of the eternities into the script. A Famine-free Ireland and Weimar Germany without the Nazis," he told JOE.

"I spent a lot of dog walks just thinking of ridiculous worlds for about a year before we shot it. I think we ended up having like 70-something by the end."

Freyne also noted that one of Joan's male suitors was "evil" in the first draft, which he changed, because he felt this would take the choice away from Olsen's character.

"[Larry and Luke] become friends in the film, and I think had they become friends earlier in the film, they might have been up for the threesome world. I think they might have gone for that," he joked.

"It was really important that both men were good choices, and that makes it heartbreaking for her and for one of the guys.

"I think it doesn't have stakes if you give her an easy out. That was one of the big things we worked on early on."

When JOE praised John Early's supporting turn as Ryan, one of the afterlife coordinators, Freyne expressed interest in a TV spin-off of Eternity.

The writer-director said:

"[John Early] is possibly one of my favourite human beings. He's so funny, and he's so lovely.

On the paper, I think that Ryan role is probably the least written, but he just made it so fully fleshed out.

You really buy into the little subplot with him and Da'Vine and definitely want a spin-off.

"I mean, I would love to [do a spin-off]. I said it jokingly on set, and then the minute you say it as a joke, you start thinking about it.

"It could be a TV series like Love Boat set in the afterlife where you have a 'newly dead of the week' and John and Da'Vine helping them through.

"Yeah, if they're up for it, I'm up for it."

How to watch Eternity

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Eternity is streaming on Apple TV+ now.