Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) are happily married with their young daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney).  The pair are devastated to learn that Almut’s cancer has returned and a rift forms between them on how to move forward.  Tobias is willing to entertain any and all treatment options while Almut would rather focus on having an incredible, vibrant, lively six months or so instead of being confined to a hospital bed for a year, even if that means spending time away from home competing on a national cooking show.   

John Crowly directs We Live in Time, a 108-minute, nonlinear love story written by Nick Payne.  The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before quickly embarking on its theatrical release courtesy of A24.  While the stars presented together at the 95th Academy Awards, the film was not announced until later, and without a built-in fan base as Justin Baldoni’s Colleen Hoover adaptation, It Ends with Us (2024) enjoyed, the luster of Garfield and Pugh drew in a large enough audience on its opening weekend to finish 5th on less than 1,000 screens.  Despite not having enough faith to go truly wide with this starry drama, it did not stop A24 from hawking $40 tee-shirts and $20 novelty kitchen timers on their webstore; but it should not come as that much of a surprise as they also have the soundtrack for the buzzy Sing Sing (2024) on vinyl available for sale while only sending that title to 191 screens at its widest release to date and still no mention of digital availability… but I digress.

A two-hander, the story being told in We Live in Time is ostensibly Almut’s as she dictates the action from the present moving forward whereas Tobias steers the ship in the past to catch up with our starting point of the cancer diagnosis.  Pugh, as a performer, continues her dramatic streak after last year’s A Good Person (2023) from Zach Braff, elevating the soap-operatic elements present in both films.  She handles the non-linear structure well, never losing her own grip on where Almut is emotionally in relation to the various people in her orbit, but this structure denies Pugh a chance to really build her character out in a meaningful way.  With that said, Pugh does well in the role as a woman who is always on her own course, wherever that may lead.  It offers her a chance to play an almost different character in each era we meet her, but one that is never totally divorced from what came before or one who will be caught unaware of what is to come.  It is more a weakness on the page than a weakness in her performance that everything is so clearly telegraphed by Payne that these characters never get to make decisions like real people.  From our perch in the auditorium, we always know more than the characters so the is little dramatic tension about where these people are heading.

As for Garfield, he has even less to do, even in the scenes where he is guiding the narrative with the one real exception being the gas station delivery scene that only works in the movies but is so implausible and milked dry for humor that it really tests audiences patience as the sequence refuses to end.  A bumbling character, the affable actor is able to really play up Tobias’ charm, but he hardly feels like a developed character and even more of just an idea of what the perfect man might be in the same way that Almut is more of a theoretical than a practical element in the story.  We Live in Time is overflowing with fantasy despite its grounded setting. Turning back to the characters, there is just a shocking lack of specificity on the page, so much so that the freedom which could have allowed the cast under more careful direction from Crowly to really unlock the nuance of grief, love, and time, instead leaves the cast without a map and compass as they aimlessly navigate the broad strokes of the narrative.  It is for this reason that in the individual scenes, the pair make for a delightful watch, even in the moments of tragedy lightened by the quirky romcom DNA latent in the script, but with some distance from the immediate, We Live in Time shows itself to be an incredibly thin story masquerading as something much deeper. 

Strangely, though, while the film leaves audiences hungry for more both in detail and in time spent with these characters, it is not easy to write the project off completely.  It struggles a little to lock into a time or place, mostly relying on Tobais’ facial hair or Almut’s haircut to demarcate the era we are in, but from a wider view, it feels more lost in time than tethered to anything specific.  It starts where it starts and ends where it ends, and while it does make sense chronologically, it feels like a story that could take place almost anywhere at any time, though that is not to be mistaken for a feeling of timelessness.

Thankfully, the dialogue largely shakes any attempt at couple’s therapy by way of TikTok jargon, but it also rings hollow to the ear. The arguments are contrived, the romance is calculated; very little of the time that Tobias and Almut spend together feels genuine or natural. Justine Wright edits the film with a steady hand, making up for this by never trying to play tricks on us safe for a few key moments as the story oscillates through time, but knowing when and how to tickle that lump in the back of our throats. Stuart Bentley’s camera also swirls around the pair giving the story an almost fairytale-esque quality to it as they dance to Bryce Dessner‘s score which sounds like the backing music of an inspirational tuned product unveiling video.  That is not meant as a slight against the music because, in the context of the film, these motivational corporate tones match the magazine glossiness of the image perfectly.

The message of the film is simple: treasure the present, reminisce about the past, do not mourn the future that might be, but most importantly, keep moving towards it.  It is a well-telegraphed story, hindered by but intrinsically linked to its nonlinear structure where the only real twist is that We Live in Time is revealed to not have been based on a weepy romance novel as the credits roll by. With pleasant enough performances from the happiest couple that are not at all right for each other, audiences are quickly endeared enough to go along with the idea since these two performers have incredible chemistry, but that bond does not extend to the characters they are playing.  It suffers from too much flourish without enough substance so while the film is supposed to capture the totality of a life, we never get that swept away by the simple vignettes.  It is not poorly made, and it is calibrated to tug on the heartstrings – and both Garfield and Pugh know when to cue up their own waterworks to sell the scene – but with the slightest bit of distance from the film after the credits roll, that emotional catharsis gives way quicker than the blinding streetlights that flood our eyes us as we emerge from the cinema, breaking the illusion and sending us back to reality.