'Love of Your Life' earns its feelings
Amazon Prime
Respect and goodness go a long way, in life and movies. “Love of Your Life” pulses with it. We’ve seen a million love stories and grief stories, explorations of connection and mistakes and forgiveness. But films with texture understand things that others don’t, and “Love of Your Life” has the conviction and sincerity to linger.
The plot sounds like an adaptation of the latest bestseller but isn’t: Maya (Margaret Qualley) works and works as a nurse and doesn’t give much thought to relationships. That’s until she meets Charlie (Gabriel Basso) after an online desk purchase, and that life-changing thing that seems impossible until it’s suddenly possible arrives. What words can explain why this is a lovely couple worth rooting for? I’m not sure. Qualley and Basso, both excellent, give their characters intangibles that intersect, and director Rachel Morrison observes their lives meshing and evolving. Then the pandemic hits, and once again life looks a lot different than it used to.
Morrison struggled a bit to get her previous feature, “The Fire Inside,” to its conclusion, and “Love of Your Life” has some of the same issue. Part of this is also because Julia Cox’s script fortunately resists some easy decisions in favor of simply letting time play out over years and seeing how people do or don’t deal with decisions and regrets. But it’s also that visualizing extended languishing time can be tough, and this movie might’ve benefited from presenting multiple perspectives. Without that, there maybe isn’t quiiiiiite enough story here.
Yet I was also invested always, with terrific supporting performances by Patrick Schwarzenegger and Aaron Pierre and a consistent blending of optimism and despair, hope and reality. “Love of Your Life” contains wisdom and blunt truths and questions that are not intended to have answers. That doesn’t make it an elevated classic romantic drama, but when the tears come it’s because you care. And that doesn't happen every time, or even most of ‘em.
B
NEW: WANT TO SETTLE A MOVIE DEBATE, TALK ABOUT '90S FAVORITES, OR EVEN HAVE YOUR SHORT HOME MOVIE REVIEWED? BOOK A VIDEO FROM MATT VIA CAMEO
ORDER “TALK ‘90S WITH ME: 23 UNPREDICTABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH STARS OF AN UNFORGETTABLE DECADE”
Matt’s new book arrived Sept. 27, 2022, and Richard Roeper raves: “Matt Pais deserves four stars for reintroducing us to many of the greatly talented but often unsung heroes of 1990s film. This is a terrific read.”
ARE YOU A “SAVED BY THE BELL” FAN?
Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)
GET 100 STORIES FOR JUST $4.99