We Live in Time’s greatest accomplishment is jamming more sentimental and silly incidents into 107 minutes than any romantic drama in recent memory.
That any of it works is due to the charismatic performances of the charming Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh. Yet their genuine chemistry can’t outshine the raft of affectations jostling for attention in Brooklyn director John Crowley’s latest, which just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Pulling on the heartstrings with tug-of-war-grade might, it’s a carpe diem fable that elicits more exasperated eye rolls than tears or laughs.
Of We Live in Time’s many missteps, perhaps none is as glaring as its decision to fragment its tale chronologically, so it hopscotches between the past and present without much care for thematic or narrative logic.
One second Almut (Pugh) is running through the woods, collecting herbs and pine needles for a “Douglas fir parfait” that she wakes partner Tobias (Garfield) to try. The next instance, she’s teaching him the best method to crack an egg. Then, she’s pregnant and having her contractions counted by a studiously efficient Tobias. After which, she’s doubling over in pain and visiting a doctor who informs her that her cancer has returned, requiring an arduous new round of treatment involving chemotherapy and surgery.
In the parking lot following this terrible meeting, Almut tells Tobias that she’s not sure she can go through this process again, and wonders if perhaps it would be better to spend her last six to eight months treasuring every day with him rather than wasting it on futile life-saving efforts. Even though We Live in Time hasn’t yet made the order of its events totally clear, it’s easy to assume (correctly) that Almut and Tobias are young parents, thereby making this proposal more than a tad implausible (and off-putting). That said, it’s far less preposterous than the couple’s origins.
In a daffy meet-cute that’s meant to be funny but comes across as merely cartoonish, Tobias—having no pen to sign his divorce papers—ventures out of a hotel in a bathrobe and is struck by a car. As he learns upon waking in the hospital, the vehicle was driven by Almut. She’s a chef, and when he visits her restaurant and explains that he’s splitting from his wife, a passionate new relationship is born.
In the past, Almut and Tobias are smitten with each other until the former divulges that she has no interest in children, resulting in a fight that’s resolved with a big Tobias speech in front of Almut’s friends (at a baby shower, no less!).
Passionate sex in bed and on the floor is commingled with contractions and trips to the maternity ward, not to mention further flashbacks to Tobias living with his dad (Douglas Hodge)—who cuts his hair in the bathtub, and even shaves the back of his neck for good measure—and the two of them meeting Almut’s family over dinner. During that sit-down, it’s revealed that before becoming a celebrated cook, Almut was a championship figure skater—one of many occasions when We Live in Time piles on just for the sake of it.
Throughout, Crowley’s temporal flip-flopping proves a gimmick designed only to gussy up what would otherwise be a straightforward dying-wife weepie. Nick Payne’s script may think this device speaks to the material’s belief in seizing the day and the beauty of the memories that make survival worthwhile. In reality, however, it serves little purpose other than to embellish the overstuffed action, whose abundant clichés undermine the stars’ winning rapport.
From the get-go, Garfield and Pugh mesh perfectly in We Live in Time, so it’s frustrating that Crowley keeps saddling them with one contrived situation after another. Of those, the centerpiece is Almut and Tobias’ race to the hospital (for the second time) to have their baby—a trip that’s stymied by traffic, motivating Almut to wander to a nearby gas station where, in a locked bathroom whose door Tobias and two employees must break down, she goes into full-blown labor. This is another only-in-the-movies predicament, if also the sole bit that actually builds enough comedic momentum to earn a mild smile. Unfortunately, like the rest of this slush, it’s just another pit stop on the road to tragedy, whose forthcoming appearance hangs over every tense fight and lovey-dovey interaction.
We Live in Time can’t stop adding ingredients, so that Almut is additionally torn between taking it slow while she receives treatment for her (ovarian, it turns out) cancer and competing in a cooking competition that Tobias thinks is, given the circumstances, a bad idea. The push-pull between individual and familial desires, needs, and responsibilities is a fundamental one for Almut, and Pugh strives to make the character’s many aspects mesh.
She’s not wholly successful in that endeavor, but she and Garfield shine whenever together, and their easygoing dynamic goes some way toward making the film watchable. It’s not, however, enough to compensate for an endless procession of cutesy details and dilemmas, be it Tobias being a Weetabix cereal salesman or Almut’s colleague and competition partner Jade (Lee Braithwaite) shaving their head in solidarity with their increasingly sick teammate.
We Live in Time is most grounded when it stops straining to be adorable and tragic, the best example of which is a low-key scene featuring Tobias joining a very pregnant Almut in a bathtub, the two of them sitting quietly and sharing chocolate-covered biscuits.
Too often, alas, Crowley de-prioritizes the real in favor of the preciously whimsical and romantic, here epitomized by slow-motion snippets of the protagonists spinning about on a merry-go-round, their smiles as big as the ride is colorful. As things grow more dire for Almut, the film gets downright maudlin, chockablock with puking in toilets and alleyways, fights over secrets and lies, and weeping over wedding invitations now dumped in the trash.
For all its zigzagging between yesterday and today, We Live in Time never shies away from the fact that it’s simply headed in one oh-so-sad direction. More grating than its predictability, though, is its excessive mawkishness, which ultimately becomes a tidal wave that drowns out everything else, including the considerable magnetism of its accomplished headliners.
