Death. Women. In Ian’s (Robert de Hoog) world the two are intrinsically linked. The pale, red-haired Ian has trouble understanding human emotions. After a few traumatic experiences as a youth, he decides to locks himself in his room indefinitely. His detachment is akin to an alien or an android studying the human world from a distance with his telescope. When he starts to interact with the outside world he does it online visiting suicide forums looking for a woman who wants to die with him. He soon discovers that he can connect and open up to suicidal women once they are dead. When Naomi (Pollyanna McIntosh) enters his life, the veil of death through which he has viewed the world slowly begins to fade away. But Naomi is struggling with a tragic loss and has her own death wish. Director Brendan Muldowney has managed to create a morbid yet humorous film, and the camerawork of Tom Comerford lightens Ian’s disturbed universe with fabulously surreal cinematography. The images and the music allow the viewer to participate in Ian’s desperate attempts to somehow form a bond with the living. LOVE ETERNAL is bizarre, disconcerting, and yet very familiar. The way the director handles taboo topics such as an obsession with suicide and a yearning for death is in the tradition of Hal Ashby’s classic HAROLD UND MAUDE.

Jens Mayer