Everlasting Love (Amor Eterno) (DVD Review)

A lonely, middle-aged teacher, Carlos, head to a local cruising ground looking for company. While there are both gay and straight people having sex there, he fails to find anyone, until he stumbles across one of his students, Toni. This starts an uneasy affair between the two, although after they have sex, Carlos realises things have gone too far and tries to break it off. However, Toni is continues to pursue Carlos, and the teacher doesn’t resist too much.

There are also strange, dark, potentially violent things going on in the woods amongst Toni friends, and it may be something that Carlos can’t escape either.

Everlasting Love is a movie that some viewers will find pointless and a little infuriating, while others will have the almost polar opposite reaction, being pulled in by its brooding atmosphere, deliberate strangeness and attempts to intrigue. It’s a movie that doesn’t have a huge amount of plot – even though it’s only 67 minutes long, the actual story probably takes up just half of that – but instead tries to build mood and atmosphere.

It does this through the use of long shots, juxtaposing different styles of music, and jumping to situations where you don’t quite know what’s going on, other than it’s a bit strange and peculiar. Indeed early on there’s an occasional air of the surreal. While some of this explained later on, a lot of things are still left up in the air. Some things are left to metaphor, although whether those metaphors work isn’t as easy to tell, especially as it seems to have an odd fear and dislike of youth, while Carlos’ actions sometimes make little logical sense.

It’s definitely an intriguing movie, but it’s also rather frustrating. Comparisons have been drawn to the excellent Stranger By The Lake. While there are similarities – not least it being a gay-themed thriller with its main location being a cruising ground – they are quite different movies. While both have an indie sensibility, Everlasting Love is more hipsterish, to the point where it sometimes seems far too pleased with himself – which is something that will turn a lot of people off irrespective of the rest of the movie.

There’s a tendency for the movie to do things where you can almost feel the filmmakers slapping themselves on the back and being very pleased with themselves – such as switching partway through from tense intrigue to what is essentially an indie music video – which is likely to have many viewers rolling their eyes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSqOcs2vcJs

However it’s far from a complete failure and it certainly kept me hooked in and wanting to know what would happen next. The premises of a teacher and his student having an affair has inherent tension and the movie takes it in unexpected directions, eschewing the usual soap opera angst you’d expect. Its long shots and peculiarities also get your brain working, and while I couldn’t help but think that despite its short running time it could have done with tightening up, it kept me pulled in. If you like movie that are a bit different to your usual movie fare and you don’t mind that for every excellent moment there’s one that doesn’t work, it’s worth a look.

Overall Verdict: As frustrating as it is effective, Everlasting Love is a movie that goes to plenty of places you wouldn’t expect, with a tense, sexual air running throughout. However, its occasional looseness and tendency towards being more interested in pleasing itself than the audience means it’s not the outright success it could have been.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac