diff --git a/spacy/pipeline/trainable_pipe.pyx b/spacy/pipeline/trainable_pipe.pyx
index 64e33f800..fe51f38e5 100644
--- a/spacy/pipeline/trainable_pipe.pyx
+++ b/spacy/pipeline/trainable_pipe.pyx
@@ -324,7 +324,8 @@ cdef class TrainablePipe(Pipe):
 
         def load_model(p):
             try:
-                self.model.from_bytes(p.open("rb").read())
+                with open(p, "rb") as mfile:
+                    self.model.from_bytes(mfile.read())
             except AttributeError:
                 raise ValueError(Errors.E149) from None