Margaret Qualley, still hot off the back of 2024's The Substance, is on significantly less surreal ground in this relationship drama. She plays Maya, a nurse who answers an ad one day to buy some furniture. The seller, Charlie (Gabriel Basso), seems smitten the second he opens his door and sets eyes on her. Luckily for him, the attraction is mutual.
We then follow the couple from this sweet meet-cute and into their relationship. Maya soon introduces Charlie to her best friend Jason (The White Lotus's Patrick Schwarzenegger) and, in return, Charlie takes her to visit his parents at their idyllic beach house. Ruth (Catherine Keener) and Kerry (Corey Johnson) are lovely, and Maya – who was abandoned by her parents as a child – starts to realise that she now has a perfect family in place. A wedding and newlywed bliss soon follows.
And here’s where the movie segues from standard romance and into drama, because the setting of this story is… 2020. Just as Maya and Charlie start to talk about having children, fate steps in. A certain global pandemic lands on the couple’s doorstep, and the comfortable world in which these young lovers live turns upside-down.
View Green Video on the source websiteLove of Your Life’s screenplay was written by Julia Cox – who previously adapted the excellent swimmer biopic Nyad – and became the subject of a bidding war. It eventually sold to Amazon for $2m, an amazing sum for an original script. Given this background, the final film should have been something really special, surely?
There are certainly glimmers of what it could have been: for example, in just a few scenes, the script nails the everyday trauma healthcare workers went through during the Covid crisis. (Note: if you have bad memories of this time, be warned that this subject matter could be triggering.) Otherwise, however, the rest of the film disappoints.
As the one carrying the entire story on her shoulders, Qualley occasionally feels a little overwhelmed. She acts her heart out in some scenes – one memorable moment, in which she cries so hard that she almost vomits, is astonishing. In others, however, she’s just... well, there, existing as blank space, with the camera resting on her face for long moments as she does absolutely nothing. This may fit with her character’s inner turmoil, but it doesn’t make for a compelling experience as a viewer. And at multiple points during the story, it’s hard to tell if she’s happy, sad or just thinking about what to have for lunch tomorrow.
In the film’s second half, Maya travels from the US to Europe and meets Aaron Pierre’s hunky Brit, Felix. At this point the movie should liven up a bit, but there’s still something rather cold about it all. Pierre does his best, but he’s playing an underwritten character who has demons of his own, yet never discusses them, existing merely as a sounding board for Maya. His likeable turn could have been the kick up the bum the film needed, but he provides more of a gentle nudge that gets ignored.
Still, with locations including New Orleans, the sunny cliffside beaches of the Algarve and London’s twinkly Battersea, Love of Your Life does at least engage the eyes with its alluring cinematography. There’s confident direction in the film’s first half from Rachel Morrison, too – she knows exactly when to cut and move on. But it all goes slowly downhill from around midway. There’s no hiding the fact that what begins as an enticing romance dwindles into a meandering, unsatisfying and sometimes self-important fumble.
Love of Your Life is available now on Prime Video.
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