We Live in Time (United Kingdom/France, 2024)

I have never been a fan of big, bold tearjerkers – the kind that often function equally well as motion pictures or commercials for Kleenex. Despite great, lived-in performances from lead actors Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, We Live in Time proves to be one of those movies that can’t resist pushing a few too many buttons as it turns the manipulation up to an “11.” The decision to present the storyline as a chronological jumble doesn’t work – it undercuts the film’s emotional core by making the artifice of certain plot elements too obvious. One can never truly sink into the airy, rom-com aspects of the early relationship because a Stage 3 cancer diagnosis is hanging over everything. (This isn’t really a spoiler because it’s revealed early on.)

Pugh and Garfield almost sell the movie. They’re great apart and even better together. They have tremendous chemistry. And maybe that’s the only thing necessary for fans of the genre. But the storyline does them no favors as it trips around to various high points during their decade-long relationship without bothering with any kind of logic as to why the screenplay is going from 2023 to 2013 to somewhere in between. I find that this non-linear approach fails more often than it works. 2024 has had one film in which it was necessary and effective (The Outrun). We Live in Time doesn’t mark the second.

We Live in Time skips across three main sections of Almut (Pugh) and Tobais’ (Garfield) time together. Chronologically speaking, it starts with a “meet cute” of sorts: Almut runs Tobais over with her car and accompanies him to the hospital. As an apology (although he was probably more at fault than she was), she offers him a free meal at the upscale restaurant that she owns and where she works as the chef. Act II focuses and the couple’s efforts to conceive. And Act III illustrates how they cope with Almut’s cancer diagnosis, which includes difficult career/life decisions and how to present the situation to their young daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney). These scenes are deeply tragic in the way they represent the inevitabilities of fighting cancer and the indignities that come with it.

I suppose the intention of presenting We Live in Time in the fashion chosen by writer Nick Payne and director John Crowley is to replicate taking a trip through Tobias’ memories – the movie is a collage of scenes as seen through his eyes (although there are times when it strays from this idea and shows things he wasn’t privy to). Unfortunately, although that artistic flourish may look good on paper, it results in a mish-mash of a narrative that can at times be difficult to navigate. Sure, there are “clues” as to the time frame – Pugh’s shaved head when Almut is undergoing chemo, her inflated prosthetic belly when she’s pregnant, etc. – but recognizing them engages the brain too much. The story, especially during its weaker moments, needs a stronger emotional than intellectual connection.

There are isolated vignettes when We Live in Time strikes gold. One montage stands out to me: Almut and Tobais, trying to have a child, go through all the ups-and-downs of being unsuccessful: the repeated negative pregnancy tests, the trips to the clinic, the fertility treatments… I know from personal experience how spot-on these scenes are. But, after the happy moment when the little stick shows a positive result, the movie transitions to a birth scene that feels like it might have been rejected by a bad sitcom.

Back in the 1990s, the rise of Nicholas Sparks’ popularity, in concert with the success of Nick Cassavetes’ adaptation of his novel, The Notebook, spawned a cottage industry of books and movies devoted to making audiences weep. Over time, that sort of heavy-handed manipulation faded from movie screens; We Live in Time feels like a throwback. Although not necessarily a bad thing – after all, doesn’t everyone need a good cry now and again? – the movie occasionally tries too hard to turn on the waterworks and allows its structure to upstage the performances by the leads. Those yearning to make use of a small package of tissues may be willing to overlook the movie’s deficiencies but I can’t help but wonder whether a conventional telling of the same story might have been more effective in the long run.

We Live in Time (United Kingdom/France, 2024)