Love Of Your Life Review: In this Prime Video romantic drama, Maya finds herself lost and adrift after she loses her soulmate. Desperate to find herself and a semblance of normalcy, Rachel Morrison’s film offers an intimate look at how heartbreak can change a person’s understanding of love and happiness.
Despite impressive actors in the roster, including the fantastic Catherine Keener, the film struggles to bring the emotions to light and struggles to be realistic. Despite some raw emotions, it ends up being surface-level and underexplored, struggling to deliver the impact its ambitious narrative promises. The cast includes Margaret Qualley, Aaron Pierre, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Catherine Keener, and Gabriel Basso, and the film is directed by Rachel Morrison.
Love Of Your Life Review
A Promising Romance Takes an Unexpected Turn
Love Of Your Life brings the horrifying realities of the pandemic in front of us once more, fleetingly making us relive 2 years of unending nightmare and a collapsing health system. In the midst of this reality is a sweeping romance between Maya and Charlie, cut short thanks to the pandemic. What starts as a story about hope, love and embracing life takes a rather atrocious and, frankly, unbelievable turn as we then see Maya living life without anything holding her back. Reeling from her loss even after years, we see her slowly fall in love once again and give life another chance.
While the story makes sense on paper, the Prime Video film misses out on the nuances that one might expect to see in a mature movie about loss, grief and acceptance. While Maya’s journey, brought forth empathetically by Margaret Qualley, has its moments of quiet heartbreak, the broader strokes of the film explore neither the romance nor the grief at any capacity.
The initial foundations of a romantic drama and then the turn to heartbreak and disdain are all marred by ideas that never take a life of their own, nor do they get the chance to breathe. Maya jumps from one thing to the next, and viewers are taken on an equally frustrating and blindingly quick ride with her, not stopping for a moment to explore any of these heavy and complex feelings.
The problem here isn’t that there’s a lot to go through; it’s that the film somehow doesn’t know how to go through them. It’s unrealistic and, frankly, a bit infuriating sometimes. While Maya’s reactions can be deemed as born out of grief, viewers won’t be able to find it in their hearts to forgive some of her crueller moments.
Margaret Qualley Carries the Film’s Emotional Weight
Coming to the characters, Qualley’s Maya is believable in some moments thanks to the actor’s merit. Otherwise, screenwriter Julia Cox creates a protagonist who is half-baked and underexplored. We somehow know nothing about her, but also go through these painful experiences with her that should, on paper, make us know more about her. The story’s central premise makes us follow Maya down this journey of moving on, showing a vulnerability that makes our hearts ache. However, there’s an inherent missing factor in the character that stops us in our tracks. While Maya tries to showcase that moving forward isn’t as easy as simply leaving the past behind, viewers find themselves lost somewhere on the journey.
The most confusing character, and the most half-baked as a result, is Aaron Pierre’s Felix, who is somehow the perfect human being on planet Earth! He’s good-looking with a British accent, a single dad to a beautiful daughter and is even on good terms with his daughter’s mother. Every other character feels similarly fantastical, with only good qualities and no flaws that make them feel human.
A Story About Grief That Looks Beyond Romance
Love Of Your Life explores what happens when the future that you envisioned for yourself is taken from you before it even begins. Maya’s experience is something that many people have gone through during the pandemic and that, in and of itself, is a traumatic thought. Thus, her experience will feel personal to many. It’s more about the grief, overcoming it and giving life another chance than about the romance.
However, the film showcases these through experiences and situations that are unrealistic and unrelatable. Maya travels without a care in the world, with no thought for how she’ll make money. A vague comment about a job that we have never seen her work throughout the runtime is supposed to explain everything.
These situations leave a bad taste in viewers’ mouths and make it hard to experience the film. The familiar ideas also don’t help since the execution is half-baked. The themes surrounding grief are also under-explored and surface-level, leaving viewers confused about where the film is going.
Final Thoughts
In the end, Love Of Your Life could’ve been a moving showcase of life after losing a loved one. The journey to finding oneself and giving life another chance is a sweet and moving thought that many can relate to. However, the Prime Video film is only surface-level and directionless, making even the better moments unrelatable. It’s heartfelt at times, but it’s uneven storytelling is what ultimately makes it unmemorable.
Watch Love Of Your Life now on Prime Video. What did you think about the film? Let us know in the comments below!
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