Cinematic love stories often pick up at the beginning: the couple meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. Alternatively, one of them dies after a debilitating illness, while the other goes on to find the true meaning of what it is to love and be loved in return. With We Live In Time, it’s all of the above within the first 5 minutes, immediately clueing audiences into the fact that this won’t be your typical linear romance.
As we jump across timelines and jumble up past and present, a portrait of a very ordinary love begins to take shape. After a standard meet-cute, Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) embark on a life of ups and downs together—for better or worse, in sickness and health.
Nick Payne’s well-plotted script does not contain shocking reveals or twists; it is simply a look at a relationship well-lived and loved. Brooklyn director John Crowley hones in on the ordinary everyday love between the couple at the heart of We Live In Time and produces something extraordinary.
The time cuts jump across huge swathes of time, but it is never confusing or jarring. The essential transitions in time are subtly delineated by shifts in Almut’s haircuts and through shifting conversations between the two. Infused with a kind of subtle inner and outer beauty, Pugh and Garfield seem meant to be together, and their natural chemistry effortlessly leaps off the screen.
Garfield has been on my radar since TIFF 2007, when I saw the stunning film Boy A, also directed by Crowley. He possessed the same heart and humanity in that role as he does here. Together, he and Pugh make We Live in Time so utterly compelling, even when we’re simply following them through the mundane everyday motions of real life. Though still determined and ambitious, Almut may lack some of the harder edges associated with many of Pugh’s other characters, but that is all to the benefit of this film and her performance.
This is the type of movie that will leave with a smile on your face, and the feeling that hope remains even through joy and sadness.
