{"id":897359,"date":"2026-09-16T02:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/897359\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T02:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T02:26:10","slug":"love-of-your-life-review-a-pretty-but-surface-level-healing-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/897359\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Love of Your Life’ Review: A Pretty but Surface-Level Healing Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt would probably be glib to refer to \u201cLove of Your Life<\/a>\u201d as \u201cGrieve Pray Love.\u201d Rachel Morrison<\/a>\u2018s film about COVID-era loss, recovery and renewal is serious in intent and earnest in execution, grounded by a performance of intelligence and emotional transparency by Margaret Qualley<\/a>, and doesn\u2019t deserve that kind of easy dismissal. But the temptation is there. It\u2019s hard not to think a little bit of Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s globe-trotting memoir \u201cEat Pray Love,\u201d the epitome of breezy Noughties self-help entertainment, not to mention Ryan Murphy\u2019s vapid, glowingly shot film adaptation, when watching this story of a bereaved young woman\u2019s long-term recuperation via perfectly picturesque travels in Lisbon, London, Tokyo and beyond. There\u2019s certainly much to be said for literal escape as a healing strategy, but Morrison\u2019s permanently luminous film too often feels like a magazine spread about that process.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor viewers after a grownup romantic drama with equal, counterbalancing side servings of tearjerking trauma and glossy wish-fulfillment, \u201cLove of Your Life\u201d will handsomely suffice, and ought to rack up considerable streaming numbers when it hits Prime Video on Oct. 14, one month after its Toronto festival premiere. Amazon MGM Studios will also give it a brief theatrical release ahead of that date, but despite the soothing eye-bath of its protagonist\u2019s well-curated world tour, the film never feels altogether cinematic: It\u2019s as attractively mounted as you\u2019d expect from cinematographer-turned-director Morrison (Oscar-nominated for her lensing of \u201cMudbound\u201d) and her own chosen DP Todd Benhazl (\u201cHustlers\u201d), but their radiant, exactingly lit images don\u2019t collectively accrue much meaning or power; the film plods through its eight-year timeline with efficient linearity but no particular rhythm.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s life inside it, though, and that\u2019s largely thanks to Qualley, a reliably curious and open-hearted actor who can imbue even quite a vaguely drawn character \u2014 like the one that screenwriter Julia Cox (\u201cNyad\u201d) hands her here \u2014 with some sense of a soul. When we meet 26-year-old Maya (Qualley), completing a Craigslist purchase of a bedside table from instantly smitten academic Charlie (Gabriel Basso<\/a>, still in recovery from playing J.D. Vance in \u201cHillbilly Energy\u201d), she\u2019s barely anybody at all: a nurse, in Boston, with no family she\u2019s willing to mention, and no life outside her grueling hospital shifts. Qualley locates defensive purpose in Maya\u2019s stiff reserve, and an errant gleam of joy when Charlie\u2019s dorky come-ons actually do the job.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore long, they\u2019ve moved in together, setting up a perfectly boho-chic love nest in their Victorian apartment. Not too much later, they spring a surprise wedding on their loved ones, to the unspoken but visible consternation of Charlie\u2019s world-weary mom Ruth (ensemble MVP Catherine Keener<\/a>), and broach the possibility of starting a family \u2014 something Maya had always sworn off doing. And all too soon after that, a certain global pandemic strikes, and the worst thing that can happen to our heroine, well, happens. Plunged into the lightless tunnel vision of debilitating grief, she spurns the company of Ruth and longtime best friend Jason (Patrick Schwarzenegger<\/a>, in a thankless part) and abruptly skips town before anyone can so much as trouble her with funeral arrangements. It\u2019s a selfish trauma response that Qualley, seemingly body-slammed and hollowed-out with pain, makes almost rational.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything that happens from this point on in \u201cLove of Your Life,\u201d however, is considerably harder to swallow. We lurch forward a couple of years to find Maya \u2014 now 31 years old, aggressively kohl-eyed and constantly smoking \u2014 skulking the gorgeous streets of Lisbon, finding little emotional relief or release in its exquisite painted tiles and pasteis de nata, though plentiful cheap vinho verde is evidently some comfort. But when she meets cute with Felix (Aaron Pierre<\/a>), an absurdly good-looking touring Brit, she embraces the possibility of romance again, following him first to a Cond\u00e9 Nast-ready holiday home in rural Portugal, and then back to his well-appointed life in West London, complete with adorable young daughter. (He\u2019s a doting single dad on great terms with the girl\u2019s mom, lest you fear this impossible dreamboat may have even a whisper of a character flaw.)<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of this even remotely resembles real life, which makes Maya\u2019s emotional recovery increasingly hard to map: We learn in passing that she\u2019s somehow funding these extended, luxurious travels with a career segue into telehealth, and when her online therapist observes that \u201cwe\u2019re really getting somewhere,\u201d we just have to take her word for it. Cox\u2019s script, meanwhile, trades increasingly in one-size-fits-all therapy speak, and despite Qualley\u2019s natural sincerity as a performer, Maya seems steadily less specific a personality as the years pass. <\/p>\n

\n\tLate in proceedings, \u201cLove of Your Life\u201d gets a welcome jolt of feeling and truth from a scene that reunites Maya with Ruth, beautifully played by Keener with all the shattered, visible exhaustion of a woman who hasn\u2019t got to nurture her grief in the Algarve sun. As she unpacks her damage, frankly but no longer angrily, against the unphotogenic greige backdrop of her house\u2019s timber siding, \u201cLove of Your Life\u201d finally reconnects with reality, and not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It would probably be glib to refer to \u201cLove of Your Life\u201d as \u201cGrieve Pray Love.\u201d Rachel Morrison\u2018s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[153568,49,48,310220,75,97955,310072,118348,337,71447,210783,2559],"class_list":["post-897359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-aaron-pierre","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-catherine-keener","tag-entertainment","tag-gabriel-basso","tag-love-of-your-life","tag-margaret-qualley","tag-movies","tag-patrick-schwarzenegger","tag-rachel-morrison","tag-toronto-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}