We Live in Time (2024)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Moments of Truth

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This is typically not the kind of movie I enjoy. Weepies with people getting pregnant and dying of cancer are among the last things I want to see when I want a cinematic experience. But director John Crowley had done a magnificent job with the similarly weepy Brooklyn, so I figured We Live in Time would be worth checking out. And it was. It tells the story of the relationship between Tobias (Andrew Garfield), who works for the Weetabix cereal company, and Almut (Florence Pugh), a professional chef, specializing in Bavarian-fusion (talk about a food contrast). The tale is told in a non-linear fashion, jumping ahead or back in time by months or years. This allows for certain deliberate deceptions, such as Tobias signing divorce papers (who is he divorcing?).

What's most interesting about the film is how Tobias's character occupies what would typically be the female energy of the story. He wants to get married and have kids, etc., while Almut has the cool job, is far more reckless and self-centered, and chooses to enter a cooking competition on the proposed date of their wedding. But they are still a good team. They're both passionate. They fight and talk, and it all feels genuine. Crowley gives the film a delicate touch — usually films of this type are heavy and drippy — and it has a surprisingly smooth flow, a well as surprising moments of humor, such as a chaotic scene in the bathroom of a petrol station. (A small fist-bump at the scene's conclusion is most satisfying.)

Best of all is that the movie handles the theme of grief in an indirect manner, never shoving it down our throats; rather than gruesome hospital scenes, we merely get poetic suggestions of absence. I may not ever want to see it a second time, but I still think that We Live in Time is a special film.