PLOT: Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) fall in love but have to grapple with a grim diagnosis that threatens their future.
REVIEW: One of the ironic things about TIFF is that, due to schedule quirks, you sometimes end up seeing movies that cover a lot of the same territory back to back. This happened to me this year with Nightbitch, and We Live In Time, with both films taking a look at 21st-century family life and the need to juggle family and career. Yet, while Nightbitch took a mostly unflinching look at the fact that relationships often become strained under the pressure, We Live In Time goes for an almost fairy tale-esque approach, with the impossibly beautiful couple at its heart having a picture-perfect life where both are fulfilled, in love and happy raising their cute child, who’s impeccably well mannered.
Not every film has to be Nightbitch though, and there’s something comforting in the idyll presented in John Crowley’s We Live In Time, which seems like it’s trying to be Love Story for 2024. To be sure, Garfield and Pugh are a gorgeous pair. The movie embraces a kind of fractured narrative that jumps back and forth in time, following their courtship, marriage, parenthood, and the eventual illness that threatens to rip the family apart.
It’s not giving anything away to note that Pugh’s Almut is the one who receives a potentially terminal diagnosis, with it given away near the start of the film. While many movies would be about the illness, We Live in Time instead devotes itself to chronicling the individual moments the two share. In a departure from the norm, Garfield’s Tobias is shown to be the one seeking marriage and commitment, with Pugh’s Almut more of a wandering sort, who works as a top chef in London and is unwilling to back-burner her career, no matter how much she loves Tobias.
It’s a good role for Pugh, who plays the type of part that would have once been reserved for the male half of the couple, with her shown to have more trouble compartmentalizing her life than her more nurturing spouse. For his part, Garfield turns up the charm, leaning into his puppy dog eyes and softer nature, although the movie is guilty of making Tobias too idealistic a character. At one time, female roles were criticized for the same thing, but here, the roles have been reversed in a way that feels somewhat pandering.
Whether or not you go for We Live in Time totally depends on how amiable you find the leads. I found it easy to invest in their story, but I must admit that I was disappointed in the fact that director John Crowley leaned into the slicker style he began using with his big arthouse hit, Brooklyn. While he had a misfire with The Goldfinch, We Live In Time still feels like a big studio effort and somewhat conventional for a movie being released by A24. The lavish lifestyle enjoyed by the leads here seems a little too idealized, making the movie feel a bit too much like a more polished (and better photographed) variation on the kind of fare you might find on Lifetime. Then again, a lot of folks might be yearning for that kind of escapism.
In some ways, this struck me as a bit of a letdown, as Crowley and Garfield once made one of the most affecting dramas I’ve ever seen – the shockingly underrated Boy A. I hoped for a bit of a return to that kind of raw, emotional storytelling, but We Live In Time too often felt like a romantic fantasy. Even still, the chemistry and performances of the two leads make it an ultimately ok tearjerker and date movie. But, one can’t help but feel that considering all the talent involved, it could have been more than what it is.
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