I went into We Live in Time expecting a romance. And while the latest film from Brooklyn director John Crowley is a romance, the story of Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) is just as much about how a single moment in your life can feel like it both lasts an eternity and ends in an instant. The quietly powerful film left me wondering: What does it mean that time marches forward and often leaves us behind? Unfolding in a series of scenes shown out of chronological order, We Live in Time is a reminder that for the worst moments to pass, the best ones must too.
We’re introduced to Almut (a chef specializing in modern European cuisine) and Tobias (a man who sells the most sensible of British breakfast staples, Weetabix) when they’re several years into their relationship. Ambitious Almut and prudent Tobias work so harmoniously together it’s an entertaining shock when we later learn that they met after she accidentally ran him over with her car. The stars have instantaneous chemistry. Pugh and Garfield embody these lovers with passion and playfulness, grounded in the realities of everyday life and everyday conversations. There’s no melodrama here: Instead, We Live in Time drapes a couple’s simple joys and simple tragedies over us like a weighted blanket. Their love story isn’t the sweeping, dramatic romance of Titanic or The Notebook – its power lies in its quiet. A relationship is more than its grand gestures and, in fact, it’s the practical choices Almut and Tobias make together about the future that display the strength of their bond.
A surprise standout for me: the film’s use of nudity. Pugh and Garfield have spoken about filming one particular sex scene in We Live in Time – just the two of them on set with director of photography Stuart Bentley. Sex in this film isn’t meant to be salacious or lurid; what makes these moments between Almut and Tobias passionate is their fervent desire for one another, the giddiness of their lovemaking in both the past and present. Intimacy is vulnerability, and Bentley captures that gorgeously. The body is a subject, not an object, here. In one lovely scene, Tobias and a very pregnant Almut share a bath together with an ease that shows us a couple who are as comfortable being naked with one another emotionally as well as physically.
Despite the novel presentation, this is a relatively straightforward story. The components are familiar: couple meets, falls in love, has child, weathers a potentially fatal illness together. But these ordinary events get an added punch from the way We Live in Time jumbles them up. In one moment, Almut might be in her 40th week of pregnancy. In the next, you might see one of the couple’s early dates.
There are no real visual indicators of when any of this is happening – no title cards, no onscreen datelines – outside of changing hairstyles and the presence of their daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney). Yet this nonlinear progression of time worked so well for me. Life is made of moments, and the moments are what we’ll be remembered by, but no one thinks of their memories in order. Almut’s central conflict lies in how she’ll be remembered. She acts irrationally, even somewhat selfishly at times, as her cancer progresses. But We Live in Time isn’t interested in denouncing her for something that’s completely natural. Pugh gives a heartrendingly earnest performance of Almut raging against the thought of death when there’s still so much to accomplish. She’s not a tragic figure by any means, and her refusal to be seen as one – and the steps she takes to make sure she doesn’t live on in Tobias and Ella’s memories this way – is potent.
Almut and Tobias are a couple I’m going to remember for a long time. Pugh and Garfield are a force together, playing these characters with such care that I never doubted their devotion to each other. We Live In Time is a gorgeous consideration of memory and life, interested in the complexity of our approach to the passage of, yes, time. Our lives will last forever, our lives will be over soon: Both can be true, and it’s nice to be reminded that the moments we live in can only ever be experienced once.
