By John Corrado
Love of Your Life is the sophomore feature from Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer turned filmmaker who made her directorial debut in 2024 with The Fire Inside. This one is an old school romantic drama, starring Margaret Qualley in a very good performance that would make her rom-com royalty mother Andie MacDowell proud.
Maya (Qualley) is a young nurse in Boston who has a “meet cute” with Charlie (Gabriel Basso), the man selling her a nightstand. Romance ensues. But also heartbreak. The film, which unfolds in chapters broken up by what age Maya is at that point (a sort of clever narrative conceit), also explores her relationships with two other men in her life. There’s best friend Jason (Patrick Schwarzenegger), and Felix (Aaron Pierre, doing very nice work), the handsome young father that she meets in Portugal.
There is a travelogue element to Morrison’s film as well, with the story covering a lot of ground. The story, which can be clichéd in places, maybe feels a bit too condensed at under two hours, especially with the amount of material here. So much so that the narrative perhaps might have been better served as a slightly longer movie or streaming mini-series.
But Qualley sells the emotion of it all, grounding the film with a textured performance as a young woman trying to find herself while experiencing a whirlwind of feelings. Morrison clearly has roots as a visual storyteller, and Love of Your Life is nicely photographed by cinematographer Todd Benhazl, who does a good job shooting the different locations. The camera also clearly loves Qualley, who is front and centre for all of it.
The most surprising thing is that Morrison is working from an original screenplay by writer Julia Cox (NYAD), and the film wasn’t adapted from a romance novel since it feels so much like one. All this to say you could watch Love of Your Life and assume it was a Nicholas Sparks movie (it was even produced by Ryan Gosling!), and that is not meant as a slight. It’s actually a compliment. The film delivers what you want from a romantic weepie.
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