SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Love of Your Life,” now streaming on Prime Video. When Rachel Morrison read the script for “Love of Your Life,” it stuck with her. Penned by “Nyad” writer Julia Cox, the story follows Maya, a 20-something emergency room nurse living in Boston without much family to call her own.
When she meets the nerdy but charming Charlie, the two start building a life together — until tragedy during the COVID-19 pandemic causes it to fall apart. Maya runs away from her pain by traveling the world, first to Portugal and then to London and Japan, but an unexpected romance forces her to confront her past and realize that there may be more than one love of her life. Morrison, who has already had an illustrious career as a director of photography — she was the first woman to be nominated for the best cinematography Oscar for her work on 2017’s “Mudbound” — made her directorial debut two years ago with the sports drama “The Fire Inside.” For her follow-up, she’d been thinking about the intersection of love and loss.
Below, the director speaks more with Variety about working with Qualley, putting the COVID-19 pandemic on screen and why they didn’t go with the obvious ending. I think there were two prominent things. One is that it’s sadly rare to have features where particularly female characters are layered and complex and flawed and messy and aren’t sort of reduced to just a plot engine, but actually have a lot of nuance and growth to do within the script.
And I thought that was really exciting to see a character who could make some really questionable decisions, but you’re still rooting for her. And then I think the reason why I was interested in the cross-section between love and loss is because of how personal it is to me. I’m somebody who was shaped from some pretty significant early loss that really transformed who I became.
And I went through the same kind of messy tumult that Maya’s character did, where you’re trying to make sense of your life after something so devastating, and you’re moving through the world without actually engaging in it. These guardrails come up because you don’t ever want to be hurt again, and it’s a real process to take those down. So I think I saw myself in Maya and in the script, and felt like I could be additive to it.
The more I sat with it, the more I realized how personal it was and therefore how right I would be to tell it. Margaret had read the script — I mean, many actresses had read the script and kind of raised their hand. A few names stood out, Margaret’s in particular, where I knew she could be a real ally and partner in this.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
