TIFF 2026 Review: Love of Your Life – “Rachel Morrison’s film was always going to be beautiful.”

Courtesy of TIFF

“Grief is never finished”

These words are spoken by Catherine Keener in Love of Your Life.  And they resonated profoundly.  Not to get too personal, but in the last year and a bit, grief has been a constant companion in my life.  Loss is never easy, whether a parent, an aunt, an uncle or even a dog.  And the truth is, that everyone processes grief differently.  Some people may bury it deep down, some lean in, some make drastic life changes, some are healthy and actually go to therapy.  While time does help to heal all wounds, once you’ve experienced loss it is with you, in small moments and big ones.

For Maya (Margaret Qualley) a 26-year-old nurse in Boston, the world has really revolved around work and her patients.  But when she meets Charlie (Gabriel Basso), her world expands.  The two fall quickly in love, yet the film takes gentle time with them so we get to see their profound relationship blossom.  That is, before the pandemic tears it apart.  That asthma inhaler really was a bit of foreshadowing.  And, while Qualley does the best panicked, devastated crying I may have ever seen on screen, this is where the real story of Love of Your Life begins.

Maya is one of those people who runs away from her grief.  She leans hard into self-destruction.  Having just upped and moved to Portugal, Maya is smoking and drinking, and having one-night stands.  She’s left behind Charlie’s family, including his mother (Keener) and her best friend Jason (Patrick Schwarzenegger). She’s abandoned her life and job back in Boston, instead relying on telemedicine to pay the bills.  For a person whose work relied on human connection, the lack of it now is the punishment she inflicts on herself.  She feels guilt for the loss of Charlie, how else did he get COVID than when she was working on the front lines?

But when a minor emergency forces Maya to intervene, she meets Felix (and suave and charming Aaron Pierre).  It starts as a typical one-night stand for Maya, but turns into more. For the first time since Charlie’s sudden death, Maya’s despair begins to melt away replaced by a sudden, and terrifying spark of happiness.  One she doesn’t feel she deserves.  What she really needs is to take the advice of an older Portuguese lady who tells her, “Don’t choose to be unhappy.  It’s lazy, and it’s harder”

Her sophomore turn in the director’s chair, Rachel Morrison‘s film was always going to be beautiful.  In 2018, she was the first woman to garner an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography for her work in Mudbound.  The fact it took until 2018 to get a woman nominated in this category is a topic for another day, but Morrison brings her stunning backdrops to life. The tiles and trolleys of the Lisbon streets, the sparkling water and dramatic cliffs of the Algarve, the bustling streets of London, the heat and history of New Orleans all come alive in her capable hands alongside cinematographer Todd Benhazl.

None of this film works though without Margaret Qualley.  There’s something about her that is enigmatic, no matter the role.  She absolutely draws you in and makes you empathetic to Maya’s journey, which ends up spanning six years.  Maya never comes across as frustrating nor unlikeable, which could easily be the case in a film such as this. Yet through the words of Julia Cox‘s screenplay her loves, losses and grief become completely relatable and, beautiful.  You can’t help but root for her to infuse the qualities she loved about Charlie into her life – his curiosity, that he was always present.

Yet, what’s refreshing about Love of Your Life is about how, despite the men who surround Maya, they never detract from her, instead they lift her up. She starts to look outward in others for ways to heal.  But, her journey with grief eventually reconnects her with herself.  She finds forgiveness.  Because Keener’s quote doesn’t stop with “Grief is never finished”.  It ends with “but, neither is love”

Love of Your Life had its world premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, September 13th. For more information head to tiff.net