We Live in Time (2024) review

Dir. John Crowley

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Had it been told linearly, and took the time to develop its impossibly attractive leads, We Live in Time might be more than a passable romantic weepy with a couple truly great scenes. As it stands, it’s a film remixed to a fault. Its structure muddies the motivations of its characters, and renders its emotional moments stunted as we, the audience, try to piece-meal their time and place.

I suppose this complaint for this kind of movie is refreshing. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen a romantic drama revolving around the sickness and imminent death of one party that I almost nostalgically recall the plots themselves being my immediate hang-up for films like The Fault in Our Stars and Me Before You. Much of this strange genre that romanticizes star-crossed lovers feels so facile and insincere in its depiction of dying and the sacrifice it takes to stand by someone who is critically ill. In the case of We Live in Time, it has almost everything working in its favor with the exception of coherency.

Shockingly not based on a bestselling novel, director John Crowley (the Oscar-nominated Brooklyn) and screenwriter Nick Payne introduces us to Tobias and Almut, played by Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, who both get the rare opportunity to flex their native English tongues. The present timeline revolves around the couple raising a young daughter amidst Almut (saying the name aloud almost activates your gag reflex) battling ovarian cancer for the second time. Despite all of this, she is still a committed chef and restaurateur, competing in the intense competition known as the Bocuse d’Or with Tobias none the wiser.

Almut makes a pact with Tobias to disregard another round of intensive chemotherapy should the initial treatments fail to put her back into remission. She’d rather have six months of living than 12 months of agony, and no one can blame her logic. Being that the film’s timeline is jumbled, it doesn’t become clear until about 25 minutes in that this is Tobias’ first relationship following his divorce. Almut accidentally mows him down with her car while he is walking the street bathrobe-clad. Badly bruised and in a constrictive neck brace, Tobias agrees to Almut’s suggestion that the two get milkshakes, which ignites their little meet-cute.

Besides, you know, Almut’s cancer diagnosis, the other lurching conflict is Tobias’ desire to have children while his spouse wants to remain focused on her career. This is where Payne’s writing fails his characters. Initially, Almut is combative at the thought of Tobias wanting children. They’re very young and should focus on the immediate future, she suggest. Just a few scenes prior, Almut was taking pregnancy tests but also fertility treatments. Almut suddenly craves a child, and later explodes at Tobias that her pursuits in the culinary competition are an effort to show her daughter that she was more than “somebody’s dead fucking mum.” Ironic, given the fact that Almut is essentially a mom, a cancer patient, and little else in Payne’s screenplay, don’t you think?

Tobias isn’t adequately developed either; he’s just a well-intentioned dad who tries to fill his wife’s numbered days with love and comfort. We Live in Time is shouldered valiantly by the eminently likable duo of Garfield and Pugh, who bring charisma and poise even to the most undeserving scripts.

My guess is Payne’s nonlinear structure was meant to allude to our own fungible memories of time with regards to those closest to us. Do you remember the exact situation where you met your best friend? Are your memories with your spouse linear? Definitely not. However, if you told the story of you and your spouse’s journey together to a friend the way We Live in Time tells us Tobias and Almut’s, don’t be surprised when the phone comes out or the eye contact lessens fairly quickly.

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, Adam James, and Marama Corlett. Directed by: John Crowley.