What happens when the life you imagined with someone falls apart — and starting over means figuring out who you are without it?
In Love of Your Life, arriving on Prime Video Oct. 14, Margaret Qualley plays a woman who leaves home after a devastating loss, only to discover that a new country and a new connection can’t put the past neatly behind her.
For Qualley, the story’s emotional pull lies partly in what her character Maya struggles to give herself: forgiveness.
“I love the journey of the story. Self-forgiveness, I think, is such a big part of her story, and that I relate to,” she tells Yahoo. “I have a hard time not being overly critical.”
Directed by Oscar-nominated Rachel Morrison from a screenplay by Julia Cox, the film follows Maya, an independent 26-year-old Boston ER nurse who falls in love and begins building a future with her partner before the pandemic brings tragedy. Maya retreats from her closest relationships and travels to Portugal, where she meets Felix (Aaron Pierre) and begins to open herself up to intimacy again.
Qualley connects with Maya’s emotional journey, even where their personalities differ.
“I think I’m probably a little more open than she is,” Qualley says. “She’s really guarded.”
The role arrives during a period of change in Qualley’s own life, following her separation from husband Jack Antonoff earlier this year. While she doesn’t discuss her marriage in this interview, she speaks thoughtfully about the film’s themes of loss, fear and self-forgiveness.
When it comes to Maya, she sees withdrawal as a response to everything the character has endured.
“I think there’s such a direct correlation between grief and fear,” she says. “She blames herself, and that self-blame cycle kind of perpetuates the fear, and she has a hard time getting out.”
The actor recognizes how difficult it can be to interrupt that kind of thinking, even when she knows it serves little purpose.
“I have to remind myself that it doesn’t lead anywhere,” she says. “Those feelings of guilt or shame, punishing myself, don’t actually behoove anybody. So the quicker I can get to letting myself off the hook, the better.”
Making Maya’s internal struggle visible required a performer who could hold an audience’s attention even when the character was keeping everyone else at a distance. Morrison saw that in Qualley.
“I really actually liked that I hadn’t seen this exact role played by Margaret before, but I knew that she could do it,” the director tells Yahoo.
With Maya in almost every frame, Qualley’s magnetism was essential. What surprised Morrison, day after day, was the nuance of her performance.
“To have a character that is withholding a lot,” Morrison says, “you feel all the things she’s not saying.”
The director wanted to give those feelings time to unfold. Having experienced significant loss herself with the death of her parents, Morrison was wary of the familiar movie trajectory in which someone suffers a devastating blow and quickly finds a happy ending.
“The saying, like, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ I would say it doesn’t actually heal them, but it helps,” she says. “But you need that time.”
Maya’s recovery leaves room for avoidance, some questionable decisions and moments when she thinks she’s ready for something, only to panic when it arrives. That uncertainty shapes Maya’s connection with Felix, played byLanternsstar Pierre, who meets her while she’s still navigating her grief.
“Maybe there are right people at the right time, but also right people at the wrong time, when you’re not quite ready,” Morrison says.
Pierre had wanted to explore romance onscreen for some time. The film’s approach made it the right opportunity.
“It felt very honest. It felt very unapologetic,” he tells Yahoo. “It felt very real in its exploration of that particular human experience.”
He also appreciates the broader meaning behind the title. The phrase “love of your life” may immediately suggest a romantic partner, but the film invites another interpretation.
“It can be in regards to yourself and your own journey and your own experience,” Pierre says. “I think Margaret does a fantastic job helming the film and staying true to those themes.”
For Morrison, that interpretation is central: “The movie is ultimately about finding love for one’s own life.” That means recognizing the relationships that sustain someone beyond romance.
“It can be platonic love too, like how important our friends are for picking up our pieces when we’re crumbled on the floor or standing by us despite some really questionable decisions,” she says.
Being open to those different forms of love, Morrison believes, also involves changing how someone relates to themselves.
“Ultimately, you need to really fall back in love with yourself in order to fall in love with life and be present to it and open to it,” she says, “and see it as a whole possibility again.”
Qualley singles out a line from the film that captures the idea.
“I love that line in the movie, to fall in love with your own life, no matter what it throws at you,” she says.
Putting it into practice is more complicated.
“There [are] moments in your life where that’s really easy, and there are moments in your life where loving your life is super challenging,” she says.
Some verdicts come more readily. Asked for an honest review of the Chanel barefoot shoes she wore on the red carpet, Qualley offers a practical endorsement: “Certainly more comfortable than heels. I’ll take a barefoot shoe over heels any day.”
The larger questions raised by the film leave more room for reflection. For Qualley, embracing life as it is involves letting go of some of her expectations about what it should be.
“Trying to let go of the idea of what you want,” she says, “the kind of suffering in that wanting, and accepting what you have and the beauty and love in that.”
