5 Best Movies Like Love Of Your Life
by Joe Roberts · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Margaret Qualley's "Love of Your Life" has become a big hit on Prime Video. The Rachel Morrison-directed drama stars Qualley as Maya, a Boston nurse whose husband passes away during the global pandemic of 2020. Those expecting a romance along the lines of the film's fellow Prime Video hit "The Map that Leads to You," however, may have been surprised to learn that this movie isn't actually as interested in the "love" part of its title as it may have appeared at first glance, as it instead delivers a candid exploration of grief.
The film sees Maya retreat from society following her husband's passing. Clearly suppressing her feelings, she refuses to acknowledge her loss, literally running away from Boston and living a clandestine life in various countries around the world. It's not until she reunites with an old friend and decides to return to the home of her former mother-in-law, Catherine Keener's Ruth, that she finally accepts her loss and learns to value the life she still has. As Ruth tells her, "Stay in love with your own life while it's happening."
That's the message of "Love of Your Life," a title that slowly reveals itself to be an admonition rather than a description of Maya and her husband's romance. As such, if you're looking for movies along the same lines, there are plenty of romance-tinged explorations of grief to keep you in a perpetual state of emotional collapse. Here are the best movies like "Love of Your Life."
All of Us Strangers
One of the most quietly powerful films of the 2020s, "All of Us Strangers" arguably does what "Love of Your Life" does but better. The film is written and directed by British filmmaker Andrew Haigh, who used Japanese writer Taichi Yamada's 1987 novel "Strangers" as a very loose basis for the script. Andrew Scott stars as Adam, a man living a hermetic life in a London high rise. His parents passed away when he was a child, and he has since isolated himself from society. But when he meets fellow tower block resident Harry (Paul Mescal), he's suddenly swept up in a romance that allows him to once again feel joy and reckon with his parents' passing.
The relationship between Adam and Harry in "All of Us Strangers" is entirely believable throughout. Scott and Mescal's performances do much of the work, but the script is tender, thoughtful, and deeply touching, making for a film that will stay with you long after watching it.
Ultimately, Adam learns to process long buried feelings and move on from a life spent on the outside of society. Much like Margaret Qualley's Maya in "Love of Your Life," then, Adam ultimately undergoes a moment of life-affirming catharsis, having been through a protracted personal hell. But unlike Qualley's drama, the film's sense of realism never once falters, and there's also a few heartbreaking twists along the way. By the end of "All of Us Strangers" you might very well be emotionally scarred, but you'll never be able to forget the experience.
Sleepless in Seattle
You simply cannot talk about romance movies that deal with grief without mentioning one of the best and most nostalgic movies of the 1990s, "Sleepless in Seattle." Unlike the ephemeral streaming fare of today, this romantic dramedy classic (and one of Meg Ryan's best movies) somehow manages to be comforting and wistful without compromising a sense of emotional honesty. It's also got a much happier ending than "Love of Your Life," just in case you wanted to save your tear ducts from taking another battering.
Like Margaret Qualley's drama, "Sleepless in Seattle" deals with loss and moving on from past loves. But it does so not via a lone, solemn acceptance of heartbreak, but via a new romance between Tom Hanks' Sam Baldwin and Meg Ryan's Annie Reed.
He's a widowed architect and father of one. She's a Baltimore Sun reporter who hears Hanks' bereaved dad on a radio call-in show and feels drawn to his calm, authentic aura. What transpires is a celebration of romantic love and its ability to reinvigorate and heal old wounds. Qualley's Maya might let Aaron Pierre's Felix slip through her fingers, but Sam doesn't make the same mistake with Annie, and it all ends in heartwarming fashion. If you need something a little more comforting post-"Love of Your Life," but which still deals with the same themes, "Sleepless in Seattle" is the movie.
The Way Back
This might seem like a curveball, but it's essentially the same movie as "Love of Your Life," only better. If you were less interested in the romance aspect of Margaret Qualley's movie and more moved by Maya's experience of finally moving forward from grief, then "The Way Back" should be your next watch.
This oft-overlooked Ben Affleck drama not only features one of the actor's best performances (making it a good way to remind yourself of his talent following his entirely un-thrilling Netflix thriller "Animals"), it renders the trauma of grief in even more convincing fashion than "Love of Your Life."
Affleck plays alcoholic Jack Cunningham, who has essentially checked out of life after separating from his wife, Angela (Janina Gavankar). It turns out the couple witnessed an unspeakable loss that tore them apart, sending Jack spiraling into an abyss of dissociation and withdrawal. When he's asked to coach the basketball team at his local Catholic high school, however, Jack might just find a way to move forward and come to a place of acceptance despite his enormous loss.
Sure, "The Way Back" doesn't feature much of the romance of "Love of Your Life." But it is the same story of someone having their world turned upside down by loss and struggling to find their way back to a place of stability and gratefulness.
The Fault in Our Stars
If you liked "Love of Your Life" and are simply looking for a sad romance movie to make you cry, perhaps with a more YA sensibility, look no further than 2014's "The Fault in Our Stars." Directed by Josh Boone, the film is based on John Green's 2012 novel of the same name and stars Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as cancer-stricken teen lovers who reaffirm one another's love for life via a whirlwind romance.
The book and film became somewhat of a phenomenon in their time — a kind of precursor to the titles yielded by the BookTok-romance-to-streaming-movie pipeline of more recent years. Today, it's not mentioned quite as often as you might think given its popularity in the 2010s, but it's well worth a revisit regardless of its similarities to "Love of Your Life."
That's not to say it doesn't share much in common with that more recent Prime Video drama. In "Love of Your Life," Maya eventually accepts her own loss and embraces life after enduring years of grief-induced heartache. In "The Fault in Our Stars," two cancer patients fall for one another and learn to find joy in life despite the looming threat of unending grief that hangs over their relationship. It's not quite the same narrative, but it carries the same message about life being worth living and love being worth experiencing despite the incredible pain that can come with its loss. In that sense, though "The Fault in Our Stars" will not be kind to your tear ducts, it ultimately delivers a similarly uplifting message to Margaret Qualley's romantic drama.
The Greatest Hits
This one flew under the radar back in 2024, buried by the never-ending surge of streaming movies. But "The Greatest Hits" is a decent little romantic fantasy film that shares a lot in common with "Love of Your Life," even while it frequently strays from the latter's attempt at indie drama realism.
As Ruth tells Maya in "Love of Your Life," "Grief is never finished. But neither is love." That's sort of the message at the heart of "Greatest Hits," which stars Lucy Boynton as Harriet Gibbons, an Angelino whose boyfriend, Max (played by Superman himself, David Corenswet) died two years prior. Already, then, we have a woman suffering from the loss of her great love, putting "The Greatest Hits" very much in line with Margaret Qualley's drama.
But this film, directed by Ned Benson (who, oddly enough, provided the story for "Black Widow" and previously oversaw the "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" films), departs from the grounded drama of "Love of Your Life" by having Harriet travel back in time whenever she hears songs she associates with Max. Ultimately, Harriet is faced with a choice that could save her former love but compromise her newfound romance with Justin H. Min's David Park.
"The Greatest Hits" might not be one of the best romance movies of the last 10 years, but it deserved more attention than it got and deals with many of the same themes as "Love of Your Life." If you like a little more fantasy with your romance-tinged interrogation of grief, this is for you.