An apocalyptic rupture on the ocean floor becomes a metaphor for the lingering wounds of a failed love affair in Danish director Ulaa Salim’s Eternal, a romantic drama couched in lightly cerebral science-fiction trimmings. Like Salim’s striking debut feature Sons of Denmark (2019), this glossy multi-Nordic co-production is visually impressive but dramatically thin, squandering rich mind-bending psycho-thriller potential to concentrate on a deluxe soap opera of hurt feelings and missed opportunities, elevating minor emotional problems to the level of operatic tragedy. Deep down, it is disappointingly shallow.
Which is frustrating, because otherwise Salim’s well-crafted exercise in Christopher Nolan-esque philosphical sci-fi boasts classy ingredients, a fine cast and superlative visual effects. World premiering in competition at Rotterdam film festival this week, closely followed by Gothenburg, Eternal is set to open domestically in April. Genre-friendly elements, strong tech credits and partially English-language dialogue could boost audience appeal globally.
Expanded from Salim’s short film Ung For Evigt (2012), which may explain its skimpy plot, Eternal begins with a promising disaster-movie bang. A remote stretch of Icelandic coastline is swallowed by the ocean, an earthquake triggered by a volcanic rift opening up on the sea bed. Caused by catastrophic climate change, this fissure threatens to expand over the years ahead, disrupting the Earth’s magnetic field and spelling doom for various species, possibly even for all humankind. The scientific details in Salim’s screenplay, much like the human emotions, do not really bear close scrutiny. But still, this is a punchy start.
A giddy, sparkly opening act chronicles the crash-and-burn romance of two young lovers, drawn together by lust at first sight in a Copenhagen nightclub. Elias (Viktor Hjelmso) is 23, a trainee climate scientist obsessed with the Icelandic fracture, while Anita (Anna Sogaard Frandsen) is a 21-year-old aspiring singer. He is nerdy, she is nervy, but their sizzling sexual chemistry binds them together until Anita falls pregnant. Too fixated on his career ambitions, Elias insists on a termination, which dooms the relationship.
Fast forward 15 years, and adult Elias (gaunt Ben Affleck lookalike Simon Sears) is a now a submarine pilot and brooding loner, implausibly still single and haunted by his heartbreaking split with Anita. He is also leading the undersea mission to seal up the fissure, which appears to have mystical powers, casting a spell over any humans that come near, conjuring up alluring siren-like visions of lost futures, alternative timelines and different life choices.
Meanwhile older Anita (actor-musician Nanna Oland Fabricius, who records and performs as Oh Land) has chosen a more low-key domestic path as wife, mother and occasional singer. But when the long-estranged couple meet again by chance, their former sexual chemistry still sizzles. Elias becomes obsessed with the idyllic family life he sacrificed for his career, fuelling more dangerous visions during his next trip to the ocean floor, apparently offering him a second chance at life with Anita.
Eternal poses a series of intriguing questions about thwarted dreams, traumatic regrets and parallel lives. Sadly the screenplay never explores these ideas with any depth, instead getting entangled in the unfinished sympathies of its two sulky, self-absorbed protagonists. The notion of a time-bending, reality-warping rip in the Earth’s crust is full of potential for sci-fi, horror or even darkly comic plot twists. But Salim deploys this dramatic device sparingly, and boringly, purely to underpin an unremarkable failed romance plot.
Salim cites Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) as key influences on Eternal, and the parallels are not too far-fetched: alas, he mostly invokes the ponderous pomposity of the former and the cloying sentimentality of the latter. This is a slick, shiny, gorgeously filmed weepie that can be enjoyed as high-class escapist trash, but it could have been so much more. Set against a dramatic hinterland of climate catastrophe and potential mass extinction, the minor emotional problems of two beautiful young Danes do not really add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Director, screenwriter: Ulaa Salim
Cast: Simon Sears, Nanna Oland Fabricius, Anna Sogaard Frandsen, Viktor Hjelmso
Cinematography: Jacob Moller
Editing: Jenna Mangulad, Mads Michael Olsen
Music: Valgeir Sigurdsson
Production design: Gustav Pontoppidan
Producer: Daniel Muhlendorph Jensen
Production company: Hyaena Film (Denmark)
World sales: New Europe Film Sales
Venue: Rotterdam Film Festival (Big Screen Competition)
In Danish, English, Icelandic
100 minutes