Nikki is a recent widow whose husband, Garret, died in a drowning accident; Nikki who has not yet gotten over it. Objects, people and situations that remind Nikki of the love of her life still haunt her. Resigned to life alone, Nikki visits an art gallery she often frequented with Garret and sees a man whose resemblance to her husband stuns her. She returns to the gallery several more times, hoping to see him. Eventually, Nikki identifies him as a professor at a small local college. She finds "Tom" on the internet and visits an art class he is teaching; but she is emotionally overwhelmed and flees. Eventually, Nikki calms down and invites Tom to give her private, at home, tutoring in painting. She doesn't disclose to him his physical resemblance to her late husband. Nikki and Tom become lovers, to the emotional distress of her neighbor, who has hoped to attract her interest romantically since the death of Garret, his friend. The strain of keeping Tom a secret from her friends and family, who would immediately recognize the uncanny resemblance, begins to wear on Nikki, Tom, and the relationship. Nikki is not alone in keeping secrets in the relationship. Tom, who is divorced for 10 years from his ex-wife yet still maintains a close friendship with her, does not tell Nikki he suffers from a severe heart ailment. When Nikki’s adult daughter Summer visits unexpectedly, finding Tom at the house, she flies into a rage repulsed by Tom’s appearance. Tom believes her outrage is triggered simply by his presence. Tom, puzzled by the daughter's reaction, accepts when Nikki asks him to fly off to Mexico with her. At a resort often visited by Garret and Nikki when they were married, Tom discovers a photo of Nikki and her husband by the bar, notices the resemblance and also realizes that a psychologically imbalanced Nikki has brought him to the very place her husband died. Tom confronts her with the resemblance and Nikki runs off into the raging surf, perhaps to commit suicide. She is rescued by Tom and they later hold one another in bed with the knowledge the relationship isn't based on anything more than his physical similarity to Garret and is doomed. A year later, Summer finds an art gallery card in Nikki's mail that turns out to be an invitation to a memorial display of Tom's art. Tom has died of his heart condition but produced an outpouring of art in his last year. Nikki attends the reception hosted by Tom's ex-wife and tearfully sees Tom's painting of the two of them titled "The Face of Love". He has painted a haunting self portrait of himself with Nikki standing in her pool at her home looking at him.
On Rotten Tomatoes, The Face of Love has an approval rating of 42% based on 73 reviews, with a rating of 5.12/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Perhaps worth checking out if only for the opportunity to see reliably powerful work from Annette Bening and Ed Harris, The Face of Love undermines its leads' performances with a scattershot script and aimless direction." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 51 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews ".
