LOVE OF YOUR LIFE
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Aaron Pierre, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Basso, and Catherine Keener
Director: Rachel Morrison
ADELAIDE
A perfectly adequate romantic melodrama, elevated by gorgeous European vistas and fantastic performances from Margaret Qualley and Catherine Keener that raise fairly repetitive material, Love of Your Life has a script that adds a timeliness to the emotional weight of the story. Writer Julia Cox makes the interesting decision to center the film’s inciting incident during 2020. We’re currently in a period where films about COVID are coming out and scaring audiences who aren’t ready to accept that collective trauma in their media diet, but this movie serves as a good appetizer to ease us into more experiences with those stories in the future.
ROBERT
The Amazon model for romance movies typically embodies the word “fluff”. So, when one is released that tries to turn its viewers into the Crying Emoji, it draws attention. Love of Your Life, as produced by Ryan Gosling, obvious stake owner in the company, is as much of a coming-of-age film as a romantic drama, despite the main character Maya (Margaret Qualley) being a full-blown adult from the start. It manages to identify how trauma can both simultaneously stunt and shape our personal growth and that self-improvement is a constant struggle. I found my emotional investment was high amidst surprising writing and impactful visual storytelling.
