Love Eternal (2013)

Directed by: Brendan Muldowney
Country: Ireland

Movie Review: Adapted from a Japanese novel written by Kei Oishi, the Irish dark drama “Love Eternal” generated a duality of feelings that confront each other. Although sometimes it seems ridiculously out of sense, others it feels like a gentle, meditative portrait of a grotesque taste for death. The story focuses on Ian, a depressive young man who spent 10 years locked at home, after a few traumatic experiences related with death - at an early age he sees his father die when he was playing with him, and years later he finds a young girl hanged in a tree. The best thing his reticent mother could do before die was writing a sort of guide to helping him with the most basic things, including a list of things to avoid in order to feel better, how to cook and also deal with his finances. Ian, completely obsessed by death, starts to meet up with some Internet forum friends who share the same desire to die. At the same time that studies the process of decomposition of human body, he helps a fellow girl ending her life, bringing her dead body home, and even taking it for a good walk outside in a sunny day. Filmmaker Brendan Muldowney decided to use an awkward music and narration, turning “Love Eternal” into a taciturn, melancholic exercise that could have created a better impact on me, if only I were able to establish some kind of sympathy for its main character. Unfortunately (or not!) that didn’t happen, and “Love Eternal”, with its pseudo-atmospheric story and indistinct dynamism, just let me a bit sleepy.