Love of Your Life

It is sentimental, yes, and some may say too much so. But it is deeply felt and profoundly insightful, honestly performed and, in its critical moments, genuinely moving. More than that, it understands something essential about grief and love: that neither ever really leave us, and that surviving their coexistence is one of the hardest, most human things we can be asked to do.

Love of Your Life is a lush, tender romance that was once a commonplace Hollywood staple, but has become all-too rare these days. It’s so good it makes you long for the heyday of the romantic drama.

Rachel Morrison’s Love of Your Life is one of my favorite things, all too rare in today’s Hollywood: A gorgeously shot romantic drama about impossibly beautiful people that still manages to feel real enough where it matters. It’s the kind of smart, heartfelt, mid-weight entertainment that rewards you for surrendering to its logic and savoring how its light cuts through the darkness for 100 minutes.

The overall pacing is such that each time it feels like Love Of Your Life has settled into convention, it swerves in an unexpected direction. This isn’t a story with twists, exactly, but there are emotional shifts and reveals that arrive in ways that challenge our understanding of what the main characters have been running to and from.

The journey we take with Maya has been in many ways such an epic one, in both literal and emotional scope, and it feels like after all of that, we should be taken somewhere more meaningful and left with insights more incisive than what we end up with. For a film so set on exploring the monumental sweep of both love and life, the end result soothes rather than soars.

There’s certainly much to be said for literal escape as a healing strategy, but Morrison’s permanently luminous film too often feels like a magazine spread about that process.

For a film with such a weighty and timely premise, it’s a shame that it’s just not very good.

The trailer for Love Of Your Life looked somewhat interesting so I decided to give it a chance. Yes I will admit I do like a good romance movie if it has a good story. The story felt more mature than your average romance movie. It dealt with grieving the loss of your partner in a what felt like a real way instead of the normal romance movie tropes. I am not a Margaret Quelley fan and I think she’s very overrated, but she does a great job in this especially when it comes to the emotional beats of grieving. You could feel her pain and her trying to move on. If you’re looking for a happy, fun-filled romance flick this definitely ain’t it but I think this is worth checking out on Prime Video. The Faces For Radio score - 71

In ‘Love of Your Life,’ Maya grapples with loss—specifically that experienced by millions during the COVID-19 COVID-19 pandemic. Director Rachel Morrison—formerly a cinematographer and, notably, the first woman to be nominated for an Oscar in that category—works from a screenplay by Julia Cox to chart the painful ordeal of a woman unable to move forward. The film takes the form of a romance that also functions as a sort of travelogue, filled with beautiful sunsets, dreamlike locations, and delectable local cuisine—all of which Maya uses in an attempt to fill the void left by her grief. In Margaret Qualley, Morrison finds the perfect collaborator to convey the protagonist’s frustration and depression; unfortunately, despite some bright spots, this meditation on grief is ultimately hindered by certain easy ways out and the well-worn clichés of the romance genre.

Love of Your Life has a terrific first and an uninteresting second half. I loved the first part. I knew what was coming, because I could feel it. I had no problem with that. I loved how they handled the middle, but the film slowed down after that. Maybe it works for others, but it didn't for me. I loved the characters though. Because of the second half, the directing is mixed. The cinematography is surprisingly beautiful, especially for a streaming film. The first half is just always gorgeous, while the second half obviously changes the aesthetic, which I didn't love, but understood. The production and costume design offer a beautiful color palette. The soundtrack fits the film, but it's forgettable. The casting is perfect and the performances are good. Love of Your Life is surprisingly amazing in the first half, then it slows down.