Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | October 23, 2026
Prime Video’s Love of Your Life is just what we’ve all been clamoring for in 2026: a pandemic movie! Yes! It’s what I wish upon every star: more COVID content! Please, drag us back to those two miserable, miserable years in America, and if it’s not too much trouble, remind us why they were so miserable! It’s all I’ve ever wanted. The only thing I’d love more is a movie that manages to be both a pandemic movie and a 9/11 movie.
Alas, Love of Your Life serves up only one of those treats. It’s a romantic drama starring Margaret Qualley as a woman who falls for a man played by Gabriel Basso. But if you tuned in, as I did, because it also stars Aaron Pierre, you can probably guess what fate awaits Basso’s character. You don’t cast Aaron Pierre as the best friend (that role actually goes to Patrick Schwarzenegger). Then again, you don’t cast him as the rebound-that-got-away, either, and that’s what Love of Your Life does anyway, so what do I know?
The gist is this: Maya (Qualley), a young Boston nurse, meets Charlie (Basso) when she buys a dresser he’s hawking on Craigslist. He asks her out. They fall in love over a series of montages, which is another dead giveaway that Charlie is not long for this world. Nobody who gets a falling-in-love montage in the first act survives to the third. Maya meets Charlie’s parents, including his mom, Ruth (Catherine Keener), and then they get married and live happily ever after.
Until, of course, the pandemic arrives. She’s a nurse. Charlie has asthma. You do the math. In case you can’t, I’ll show my work: She brings COVID home from the hospital, Charlie gets sick, and Charlie dies. Ruth blames Maya for infecting him. Maya crashes out, torches her life in Boston, flees to Lisbon, and takes a telehealth job, because nothing says healing like squinting at strangers’ rashes over Zoom from an ocean away.
In Lisbon, a shattered Maya mourns the … love of her life. (Roll credits on the title drop, please.) She can’t bring herself to move on. Then she meets Felix (Pierre), and if you think you know where this is headed, you’re probably wrong. This is not the movie where someone heals by falling for someone new. Maya does catch feelings for Felix, but she bolts the second things get real because she can’t stomach the prospect of losing someone again. She dumps him and moves to Tokyo. As one does.
A year later, Maya decides that maybe she’s ready to move on after all. She tracks down Felix, only to discover he’s gone back to his ex-wife. Too late, Maya. That leaves Pierre stranded in what amounts to a throwaway role. He deserves so much better. Frankly, so do we.
Anyway, Maya eventually drags herself back to Boston to make amends with Ruth, who’s still plenty bitter but ultimately urges Maya to get on with her life. Maya then plays an old cassette tape Charlie gave her until the sound degrades into white noise, which is the movie’s not-so-subtle signal that it’s time to move on. Then the credits roll, which is the viewer’s signal that they’ve just wasted an hour and a half of their life. The end.
