The Insecure, Needy 'We Live in Time' Will Make You Swipe Left

We Live in Time, a throwback blend of awards-friendly sentimentality with bursts of 90s-era Richard Curtis comedy has likeability on its mind. It stars two British actors, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, who never fail to exude charm and selective enough in their projects that a new one is more likely than not to excite us. The film, directed by Brooklyn and The Goldfinch director John Crowley, puts Garfield and Pugh in the center frame as a devoted London couple whose typical relationship hangups – indecisiveness, miscommunications, insecurities – are electrified by fraught milestones: difficult pregnancies, terminal illness, and the existential fear of what moments we’ll be remembered by. 

Almut (Pugh) is a chef on the verge of opening a restaurant serving Anglo-Bavarian cuisine when she hits Tobias (Garfield), a divorced Weetabix (a British cereal brand) employee, with her car,. This meet-cute is the starting pistol for a head-over-heels romance for the pair. Tobias is nebbish, neurotic, and sensitive to a fault; Almut is decisive, driven, and suffers no fools. They’re everything each other is looking for; they couldn’t be more different. At least, this is what’s suggested by the familiar romance plot. However, the characters are far more limply written than is needed for an effectively weepy melodrama about raising a child and facing cancer.

The film jumps around a decade in a non-linear fashion (screenwriter Nick Payne wrote a similar time-hoppy relationship drama in his hit play Constellations) that livens up the immediate experience of piecing together a relationship. But as a structural device, it is too unambitious to make We Live in Time anything more than passingly pleasurable. The film uses attractive, charming leads and a deliberate but undercooked storytelling gimmick to justify a flat and frequently bizarre story. Beyond the film’s most intriguing and marketable elements, there’s barely anything substantive underneath.

There’s a good amount that is likable about We Live in Time. As Tobias, Garfield turns up his usual hyper-sensitive affectations to eleven, playing another heart-on-his-sleeve, flawed character who is much more tuned to the broad emotional expectations of a rom-com lead – he’s charming in how breathy and effervescent he can get during the unmapped territory of his courtship with Almut. Life sucks for Tobias until he meets Almut (well, at least after she hits him with her car), and the sudden change of pace scares him into acting rashly with his ambitious partner. 

It’s worth noting that two actors who are watchable on their own merits do not always translate to having romantic chemistry. Garfield and Pugh spark off each other with ease; their acting chemistry is superb. But, it rarely feels like there’s a strong sexual or romantic attraction between the pair, especially in the timid, snapshotted love scenes.

Watching Pugh breathe life into a role will probably always be delightful; however, the character of Almut plays so neatly to her strengths – a natural fortitude and intensity, a spirited and charming personality, having to face immense personal odds – that there’s little opportunity for her to give us anything new. As the film moves forward (and backward), she reconsiders her resistance to raising kids and shoulders the burden of a severe diagnosis, and Pugh’s performance gets trapped in the familiar, and therefore ineffective, half-realized tropes of twee British grief dramas, complete with vague gestures at poetry and muddled dramatic stakes.

When faced with terminal ovarian cancer, Almut refuses treatment that could extend her life but will reduce its quality (while every sick person deserves this right, Almut’s repeated description of a “passive” life-fighting cancer is a bizarrely ugly choice). Without informing her husband, she accepts an invitation to represent Great Britain at the Bocuse d’Or, a world-class global cooking competition, ostensibly to prove that her life amounted to more than being a mere mother, including to her young daughter Ella (Grace Delaney). By this point, Almut’s restaurant has gained a Michelin star. She lives in exclusively lovely homes and, apart from her illness, faces no other source of conflict in her work or social life. She is solely defined by what she’s incredibly talented at and her suffering.

Almut and Tobias’ parental life is vaguely detailed – restricted to montages of naturalistic improvising with Delaney and putting a baby-talk spin on serious dramatic discussions – leaving no meaningful sense of a family. The best scene in We Live in Time is when Almut gives birth in a gas station toilet on New Year’s Eve, with only Tobias, two nightshift staff, and the helpful voice of a nurse over the phone to aid her. It’s tense and funny, and it blends joy, panic, and beauty with a confident touch. It’s also the most attention We Live in Time pays to all three family members in the same scene, save for a clunky moment where Tobias snaps at a magician interrupting the attempt to break Almut’s illness to Ella.

It doesn’t help that Crowley and Payne insist on chopping up their story into bite-size, out-of-order chunks that frequently distance the two parents from their child. You’re not supposed to make a family grief drama where the children have zero presence in the script; however, everything in We Live in Time has to gravitate around Almut and Tobias, meaning that we can only be affected by what’s in their immediate emotional orbit. As a result, the film collapses due to its eagerness to move and impress us. We Waste Your Time is a more appropriate title.

We Live In Time is playing in limited release in the U.S. and is available to stream via Fandango Now.