“Love of Your Life” DP Todd Banhazl on Finding a Spiritual Collaborator in Director Rachel Morrison

Cinematographer Todd Banhazl embraced the chance to work with his friend and colleague Rachel Morrison on her sophomore directing effort, Love of Your Life (her first was 2024’s The Fire Inside). Morrison’s accomplishments as a cinematographer, including an Oscar nomination for Mudbound, the first woman cinematographer to earn that honor, didn’t intimidate Banhazl; rather, he jumped at the chance to serve as DP and support Morrison’s vision.

“It was a perfect match. Rachel and I work in a similar way; the greatest gift of the movie was to have that trust between us,” says Banhazl, whose credits include Hustlers (2019) and the series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022). “A shot is finished when the performance is there. From the beginning, she asked if I was comfortable because she sometimes likes to operate handheld during an emotional scene with an actor. I love that; I want to work however the director needs in order to do their best work. It was such a joy to be able to watch over her while she worked with the actors. It made the movie better.”

The focus of Love of Your Life on a young woman’s profound grief and gradual journey back to life demanded a crew that was “kind and led with their hearts,” Banhazl says. “Having been DPs, Rachel and I know that crewing is casting. It was a beautiful on-set experience; we were working in a safe, creative space.

It makes sense that shooting a bittersweet romantic drama started with falling in love with Julia Fox’s script.

“It was the chance to make a classic adult drama, what we grew up with, and what movies used to be,” Banhazl says. “I could not get the script out of my heart when Rachel first sent it to me. I found what it explores about loss and love in the face of grief to be personal and resonant, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I called Rachel and said, ‘I think I have to do this.’”

Love of Your Life had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and a theatrical release from Amazon MGM Studios this month before it began streaming October 14 on Amazon Prime Video.

The film centers on Boston nurse Maya (Margaret Qualley), who falls in love with Charlie (Gabriel Basso), then suffers an unimaginable loss. Maya leaves everything behind and travels to Portugal, then London and New Orleans on a literal and metaphorical journey back to life.

As Banhazl and Morrison traveled to those cities and scouted locations, the challenge was capturing the settings’ beauty from the perspective of a young woman in the throes of grief. “The joy of working with a director who is a cinematographer is that we blocked everything backlit to the sun,” Banhazl says. “It was easy to make the movie look beautiful. But my goal was to help [Morrison] stop thinking like a cinematographer and just be a director.”

The visual sumptuousness is often deceptive since Maya can’t enjoy the color and life around her.

“Everything comes from Maya’s experience, from her journey back to herself and figuring out how to love her own life,” says Banhazl. Each physical location reflected Maya’s internal state. In Boston, where she and Charlie meet and fall in love, it was sunshine and wind.

“We blew lots of wind through leaves; it was how Maya moves in the world, the feeling of something bigger whispering outside of her. In Portugal, when she’s grieving, beautiful sunlight hits ancient buildings, but we chose a motif that kept her out of the light. We had her walking in the shadows,” he says.

“New Orleans was wet; we wet down the streets, walls and windows, almost like the city was releasing emotion. Each of these places has postcard experiences. But the film circumvented that and found more specificity. The beauty is there; it’s a love letter to these places, but it is a person’s choice if they let it in.”

A romantic drama about adult emotions, shot on location to boot, felt like a throwback to Banhazal, who cites as influences character-centered films set in specific locations such as The English Patient, Lost in Translation, and All of Us Strangers.

“They are about places and people. But then we moved away from influences and let Maya lead us. We went to all these places, which itself is traditional filmmaking, and that’s what motivated everything,” he says. “Rachel and I love an emotional camera and lens, but we kept one foot on the ground to not overly romanticize it.”

Ultimately, Banhazl was most moved by the film’s emotional intimacy and the care that Morrison took with the actors. “My favorite scene is near the end, when the two women [Maya and Ruth, her mother-in-law, played by Catherine Keener] are talking. Their conversation, and what it means across generations in that moment, that was everything to me.”

Banhazl has already shot two features slated for release next year: The Rooster Prince from director Josh Penn Soskin, which he describes as “a cousin, spiritually, to Rachel’s movie about loss and family,” and Flesh of the Gods, an ‘80s vampire thriller starring Kristen Stewart and Wagner Moura.

“I’m always looking for the films I have to do because of something I need to explore,” he says. “I’m looking for something deeper for myself, and that makes it deeper for the audience.”

Featured image: Gabriel Basso and Margaret Qualley in “Love of Your Life.” Courtesy Amazon MGM Studios