There is nothing that quite compares to a tear-jerker or a good romance and We Live in Time seems to be already demonstrating its prowess in both categories. While it isn’t reinventing the genre, honestly it’s almost a cliché – the determined beautiful-but- quirky heroine marries the quiet, bookish male lead but shockingly develops a terminal illness somewhere in the narrative. However, the only difference is that director John Crowley does it well, frankly, better.
The story of Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) begins with her jogging through the woods, stopping to pick wildflowers to include in her unique take on Germanic alpine cooking. The rhythmic beat of her footsteps becomes a metaphor for her resilience and persistence throughout the film That ties together the non-chronological . As she lopes to the quaint garden of her countryside cottage we’re drawn into their perfect, cosy lives, complete with a sleeping Tobias.
The flash back/flash forward nature of the narrative is at times confusing, but once you get your head around it, Crowley uses it to paint a hypnotising image of the life that Almut and Tobias lead, giving equal weight to their lives before and after Almut’s diagnosis. Essentially all the parts of their lives are happening at once. This makes the film feel like an equal balance of teary chronicle of her struggle and quirky modern love story.
Chronologically, their story begins with Almut running down Tobias as he crosses the road, on the eve of his divorce. She then takes him to the hospital and they fall in love shortly afterwards when he comes to the opening of her new restaurant, suspiciously solo. The montage of their lives plays out their getting together, working through her first round of ovarian cancer, and working through the conception and birth of their daughter. Chronologically we work our way back to her second diagnosis and representing the UK in the Boucle D’Or cooking competition. Their growth over time is chiefly shown through Almut’s changing hairstyles. This is one point where the film is its weakest – there is very little development in Tobias. We don’t really know his backstory, apart from the fact he has an unspecified job at Weetabix and is divorced, and he never really changes throughout the film. While the character development of both leads is very skillfully woven throughout the narrative, there just seems to be more of Almut.
The success of We Live in Time is its vivid modernity. The characters are achingly from the 2020s, both in costume (including Almut/Florence’s delicate ear stack) and in personality (Almut’s refreshing take on having children, and on the grief of terminal illness) and choppy way it oscillates between each element in their lives does read somewhat reminiscent of short form social media videos. While it really is centred around Almut’s storyline, there is also something modern to that too. Maybe, just maybe, We Live in Time is the bittersweet feminist romantic comedy that the world needs in 2024.
7/10