No kidding, this is what someone had to say about Eternal on IMDb’s comments section for the film: “It was an astonishing display of imagery and it explored the far corners of sensuality.” If by “imagery” they mean ad copy and by “the far corners of sensuality” they mean the stilettos, smudges of dirt, and sexy-secretary glasses that separate one animatronic woman from the next in this story about some cop, Pope (Conrad Pla), with a fondness for auto asphyxiation in pursuit of a 400-year-old-plus Sapphic high priestess, Elizabeth Kane (Caroline Néron), who’s sucking the dykes of Montreal dry for the sake of her eternal youth. Note to Maras1979 (who, a quick Google search suggests is simply a shill for the film): Just because the story climaxes within the confines of a Venetian costume ball with lesbians rubbing up against each other in dark corners does not make Eternal and Eyes Wide Shut kindred spirits. It’s not even the Chinatown dupe to Eyes Wide Shut’s authentic Prada bag, because those illegal downtown fascimilles are not only impressive but sometimes better than the original (see Secret Things). It’s much tawdrier than that, like cheap haute couture, and why should straight guys and lipstick lesbians have to pay to see it on the big screen when they can just stay home and plop in some dupe of the Red Shoe Diaries into their VCRs? Between them, first-time directors Wilhelm Liebenberg and Federico Sanchez have backgrounds in advertising, comic books, design, and fashion, and this diversity certainly shows in the sense that they know a really cool mod building and hot ride when they see one, but this isn’t filmmaking so much as an excuse to endorse an elaborate male fantasy. By the time Elizabeth has plopped a series of Italian women—titties popping and buttocks in the air—over her gaudy fountain of youth for the sake of spilling their blood and elongating her life, you may want to tell Liebenberg and Sanchez to get lives of their own.
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