Who’s to Say You Can Only Have One?

Rachel Morrison’s Love of Your Life was not the movie I was expecting.

From the film’s title and the marketing (especially the poster, which features a naked woman presumably about to go for a swim in the ocean), I figured it would be a female-oriented, swoony love story. And, to a degree, it is.

But the film is really about something else: trauma, grief, and the messy process of figuring out who you are after the life you thought you were going to have suddenly disappears.

Margaret Qualley stars as Maya, a Boston nurse who meets Charlie (Gabriel Basso, Super 8) through the most random of modern circumstances: buying a piece of furniture from him. They fall in love, build a life together, and get married.

In the first third of the movie, I really appreciated seeing parts of the Boston area that don’t routinely get the Hollywood treatment. There’s no Fenway Park or the same old establishing shots of the Charles River you’re used to seeing elsewhere. Kudos to cinematographer Todd Banhazl and Morrison, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer herself, who’s from Cambridge and also operated the camera for parts of the shoot, who made the city and the Cape look so good.

But the movie moves slowly — very slowly — especially in this initial section. For a while, you may find yourself wondering (as I did) whether there’s actually a plot, or if we’re just going to watch every beat of this relationship play out. And then Maya and Charlie see a news report about the coronavirus, and, well, the film’s timeline becomes clearer, and it isn’t long before the inevitable happens.

So, yeah, Maya suffers a devastating loss. The movie follows her in the aftermath as she tries to put herself back together, leaving Boston and embarking on a journey that involves many nights of trying to drink and sleep away her sadness.

Cut to: Years later, Maya is in Portugal, where, one night, she meets Felix (Aaron Pierre, so good on the HBO show Lanterns), who opens Maya up to the possibility that she might be able to love again. “I know he was the love of your life,” Felix says, referring to Charlie, “but who’s to say you can only have one?”

That the movie is heavier than it appears isn’t exactly a negative. Frankly, I’m glad it wasn’t the simple love-triangle story I was expecting.

And I’ll admit: Going into this movie, I thought it was based on a novel, like so much that’s released by Amazon these days. It’s not. Kudos to screenwriter Julia Cox (Nyad), who has created original characters that feel lived-in and real, and not like caricatures pandering to female viewers.

Which brings me to Qualley, who is particularly good, mostly because she does something we don’t see her do often enough: she plays a relatively “normal” person. There’s no eccentricity dialed up to 11, no obvious performance gimmick (unlike, say, in The Substance, Poor Things, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, or How to Make a Killing). She actually underplays Maya, and it works. Her grief feels internal rather than performative, which makes some of the movie’s quieter moments surprisingly effective.

Also good are Patrick Schwarzenegger (The White Lotus season three), who plays Maya’s best friend, and Catherine Keener (Please Give), who plays Charlie’s mother.

But, yeah, the movie’s pacing is a real problem. The episodic structure contributes to that feeling. For a while, you may find yourself wondering how much more of Maya wandering around being sad in attractive locations we have to watch. Eventually, though, the pieces start to come together.

Ultimately, I don’t regret seeing Love of Your Life. It’s not bad. In fact, there are stretches when it’s quite affecting. 

But I’m really glad I saw it in a theater. If I’d been watching it at home, I’m pretty sure I would have turned it off before we reached the halfway mark.

There’s a worthwhile movie in here. It just takes a very long scenic route to get there.

I’m giving Love of Your Life a B–.

The film hits select theaters on October 7 before streaming on Prime Video a week later.