Ryan Gosling’s ‘Eat Pray Love’-Produced Romance Finds Its Strength in Margaret Qualley | TIFF Review

Margaret Qualley's Globe-Trotting Drama 'Love Of Your Life' is 'Eat, Grieve, Love' | TIFF Review Image via Amazon MGM; Chiabella James/Prime Published Sep 15, 2026, 5:23 PM EDT Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Lists, Reviews, and Interviews. She also serves as the primary editor overseeing Collider’s Signature Series profiles, spotlighting some of the most influential voices in film and television. Tania has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. She has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business more than 15 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Kate Winslet, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog. She has covered set visits, in-person junkets, and red carpets for several films and TV shows, including most recently, The Sheep Detectives, Masterchef, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Sign in to your Collider account There is something very Eat, Pray, Love about director Rachel Morrison’s newest film, Love of Your Life, which made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend. But for all those hoping for a globe-trotting feast of self-discovery, there’s a lot less pizza this time around and a lot more grief attached to those passport stamps. After losing the future she thought was all set, Margaret Qualley’s Maya does what plenty of people have probably fantasized about when their life goes sideways: Abandon everything, head to new cities, meet new (and often sexy) strangers, and live a life where nobody around you knows you well enough to ask how you’re really doing. At first, that freedom feels like the point. Maya likes the feeling of being anonymous because it means she doesn’t have to be the person who lost her husband, Charlie (Gabriel Basso), left her job at the hospital, and has no idea of what comes next. But Morrison’s film slowly tries to turn that escape into something more meaningful, because the further Maya gets from home, the clearer it becomes that her grief is something she can't outrun. She has to go through the steps of understanding how one carries that pain while making room for the kinds of love already in her life, and other kinds she has yet to find. Produced by Ryan Gosling and written by Julia Cox, Love of Your Life is a warm story about love, friendship, and really just starting over. But for all it does with its performances and glamorous backdrops, it doesn’t say anything especially new about grief. Some of its ideas are also simpler than the film seems to think they are. But Qualley gives Maya enough depth to make the familiar parts feel honest, even when the 109-minute feature never quite reaches the emotional high it’s aiming for. What Is ‘Love of Your Life’ About? Image via Amazon MGM; Chiabella James/Prime When we first meet Qualley’s Maya, she’s a 26-year-old nurse in Boston who spends her free time restoring old furniture. It’s actually one of those antique pieces that also brings Charlie (Basso) into her life; she buys an item from him online, leading to a sweet meet-cute without trying too hard. Charlie’s a little awkward, very open, and almost immediately taken with her, even noting at one point how she feels “familiar” to him, winking to the audience that these two are soulmates. As Maya is more guarded, the pacing of their dynamic begins to blossom naturally, never feeling rushed. Soon, he folds her into his large, very connected family, including his incredibly doting and warm mother, Ruth (Catherine Keener). Maya also brings Charlie into her circle, though hers is much smaller, with just one best friend, Jason (Patrick Schwarzenegger), and an absent mother we never see or hear from. But as the film jumps ahead, the life Maya thought she had looks very different at 31. She is suddenly moving from place to place and keeping everyone at arm’s length. Her days are also much looser, her relationships more casual, and she never stays long enough for someone to recognize her. But eventually, she meets Felix (Aaron Pierre), a single dad who complicates that arrangement by becoming someone she actually wants to know and genuinely begins to have feelings for. From that point on, Love of Your Life is less interested in who Maya loves next than in how she starts living again. ‘Love of Your Life’s Writing Doesn’t Always Go Deep Enough Image via Amazon MGM; Chiabella James/Prime Cox’s script for Love of Your Life has a lot of good ideas about love, grief, and even the different types of relationships that shape our lives. But it never really digs as deeply into those topics as it could. For example, Maya’s love for restoring furniture highlights that disconnect. Sure, it’s something that connects her to Charlie because of their meet-cute, but it’s also something she once found meaningful before him. There’s also an obvious link between an individual who loved giving old things a new life and a woman trying to rebuild her own, but the writing never explores that parallel. On top of that, her relationship with her mother feels similarly underwritten. We hear enough to understand why Maya values independence and keeps people at a distance, but this aspect of her personality never feels truly lived in. But the movie's biggest issue might be how easy it makes her escape look. In what feels like a Michael Scott statement of running away from your responsibilities, Maya leaves everything and everyone — including her career, family, and friends (many of whom filled her house from wall-to-wall at her wedding). Yet she chooses to disappear overseas for literal years. Naturally, she returns but without much attention paid to the cost of any of it, either emotionally or financially. It fits the Eat, Pray, Love fantasy on all levels, but there is a lot of privilege built into being able to drop everything until you feel ready to come back — freedom that is far less available to many women, especially those dealing with financial, cultural, or even family obligations (with bad moms). That glitzy kind of quality is part of why the film never becomes as profound as it seems to want to be. Its ideas about grief are moving and will definitely make you sob, but they’re also familiar. Morrison’s direction helps by keeping the emotional shifts quiet and visually rich, especially when Maya is alone with her thoughts, but the writing sometimes introduces richer ideas than it knows what to do with. All that said, the journey is pretty gorgeous. The film does a decent job of shifting Maya without making every change obvious, moving from the warmth of her early life with Charlie into some darker nights in unfamiliar places once she leaves home. It’s in these moments that Morrison knows how an image can say more than any speech about grief. Margaret Qualley Keeps ‘Love of Your Life’ Grounded What really carries Love of Your Life, though, is its cast, led by a very restrained and pointed performance from Qualley. Never once does she overplay Maya’s grief, which makes the small shifts in her performance land harder and feel more genuine. Through the tiniest of expressions, you can see a bit of hope creep back in through a half-smile or a glance. It’s the kind of performance that works because Qualley doesn’t push for it to be a big moment every time. As the film’s leading men, Basso and Pierre also give Maya’s two very distinct romances completely different energy. Whereas Basso makes Charlie warm and specific enough that you understand why Maya holds onto him so tightly, Pierre brings a softer kind of confidence to Felix without making him feel like he’s someone meant to replace Charlie. Meanwhile, Keener gets some of the film’s most emotional material as Ruth and gives it all exactly the right amount of weight, particularly a moment outside Ruth and Charlie’s apartment that paralyzes Maya and reroutes the film. Even Schwarzenegger works well as Maya’s best friend since college, Jason, in a friendship that needs to feel easy and lived-in rather than overly sentimental. It also has to be a very objective relationship where one (in this case, Jason) can hold the other's feet to the fire, with Maya understanding what it means from his point of view. Suffice to say, there really isn’t a weak performance in the bunch here, and that matters when the script itself sometimes feels a little too neat or surface-like. Between Cox’s writing and Morrison’s direction, the cast finds great texture in places where the material feels a bit frail and manages to make it their own, which is why Love of Your Life remains easy to care about, even when its ideas feel familiar. It’s not going to break new ground in terms of romantic dramas, but Qualley and the people around her make sure it still leaves a mark. Release Date October 7, 2026 Runtime 106 minutes Director Rachel Morrison Writers Julia Cox Producers Ryan Gosling, Jessie Henderson Cast Pros & Cons Margaret Qualley gives a restrained, deeply felt performance that keeps Maya's grief grounded. Rachel Morrison makes the globe-trotting journey visually rich without overplaying the emotion. The film gives romance, friendship, and chosen family equal emotional weight. The script introduces several strong ideas but does not always explore them deeply enough. Maya's past feel underwritten despite shaping so much of her character. Her years-long escape abroad feels too easy, glossing over the financial and emotional cost of leaving everything behind.