Love, suicide, obsession and black comedy make for strange bedfellows in this offbeat and occasionally off-balance Irish feature. The dark philosophies that writer/director Brendan Muldowney brought to his often brutal debut Savage aren’t completely absent from his study of an isolated and death-fixated young man, but with lush cinematography, some comic touches and a palpable sense of yearning, Love Eternal proves a much more hopeful offering.
Dutch actor Robert de Hoog is Ian, a troubled young man whose early and repeated brushes with tragedy and death have caused him to disengage from the world for over a decade. Slow-moving, almost expressionless and allowing his accent to further denote distance from those around him, de Hoog brings a sense of vulnerability and enigma to his character. When Ian begins forming emotional attachments with the bodies of young suicidal women, his seemingly necrophiliac desires actually reveal a much more innocent need; one for connection, without pain.
Ian’s often confused and interchangeable obsessions with love, sex and death are deftly handled, though the more overreaching themes of Kei Oishi’s novel can seem clunky onscreen. The character’s burgeoning relationship with a young widow (Pollyanna McIntosh), for its part, descends into formulaic rom-com character tropes.
Shot in Luxembourg and Ireland, and featuring English, Irish and Dutch actors, Love Eternal lacks a sense of place. Muldowney may have aimed for emotional displacement, but his movie feels madly muddled. That said, dreamy cinematography, a jazzy score and nice performances make this odd feature just engaging enough.