Sometimes life is funny. One day you're sitting in your kitchen in Indianapolis, a few years out of college and wondering how you're ever going to build a career in independent film. Fast forward a couple decades and one day you're attending the Toronto International Film Festival as part of your job and, through a fluke of programming and badge access, you're attending the world premiere of We Live In Time, the new film by John Crowley (Brooklyn) starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a couple navigating the ups and downs of building a life together.
For a number of reasons, it was a very special screening, and it's not lost on me that being in that room was being in some rarified cinematic air. (Also, Pugh's dress was fantastic in person). I just wish I'd liked the film more.
We Live In Time marks the first original script from Nick Payne, who also adapted 2017's The Sense of an Ending and 2021's The Last Letter from Your Lover, and it's the crux of the film's struggles. The issue is certainly not the performances, as Pugh and Garfield share an undeniable chemistry and create an on-screen partnership that resonates with realness. And Crowley, who reached deep into my heart and changed it forever with the achingly beautiful Brooklyn, creates a space for his audience to feel like we're more than just outsiders observing the proceedings.
Pugh is Almut, a young chef eager to make a name for herself in the industry, and Garfield is Tobias, who works for cereal brand Weetabix and lives a not-very-adventurous life. Their worlds come crashing together, literally, when Almut hits Tobias with her car and stays with him at the hospital as he gets medical attention. This odd meet-cute sets in motion a life-altering decade or more, as the film bounces among three timelines to show us how their relationship develops. From the early rushes of dating and moving in together to meeting each other's families and digging deeper into their respective pasts, we get to know these two as they get to know each other, and it's invigorating.
Soon, their careers are growing as is their family, as they welcome a baby girl, Ella (Grace Delaney), in an over-the-top delivery scene that's just so bizarre it could be true. They move to a cozy cottage where they keep chickens and have a big yard for their daughter to play in. They are deeply in love and have the kind of conversations those in committed partnerships are familiar with, from the mundane to the aspirational to the extremely difficult. In one early scene where they two are still dating, Tobias summons the courage to share with Almut the depths of his feelings for her, and her response is not at all what he expects. It's an honest and brutal conversation, a test of their relationship and one neither they or we are entirely sure it will survive.
These are the moments where We Live In Time shines, when Pugh and Garfield spar and engage in messy, real ways; both actors are at the top of their form, and Pugh's third-act monologue is one for the ages. She truly shows what she's made of. But by that point, Payne's script has become so overstuffed with plot points and backstory (oh, she was also a childhood figure skater? Cool...) that the gravity of their new reality and some of the decisions Almut makes because of it become untenable. What's more, the narrative begins to push Tobias's story to the sidelines, becoming little more than a foil to all Almut is dealing with. It's an unfortunate progression, as what is so promising about the film overall is the partnership at its heart.
Few films recently are as purely humanist as We Live in Time, where the central focus is the interpersonal relationships we all navigate day in and day out. There is no heist, no mission, no fantasy element or even a villain to speak of. Crowley is at his best in this milieu, bringing an audience into a film by reflecting our lives back to us, and he has great collaborators in Pugh and Garfield, who fully commit themselves to the film's emotional journey.
Unfortunately, all of that is ultimately dragged down by a script that, in its effort to infuse a sense of meaning into all the couple has going on, only ends up overstuffing the plot to the point of bursting. A bit of trimming in the third act might have rescued Crowley's well-meaning end product and elevated We Live in Time to the sentimental moviegoing event the film's marketing campaign wants you to believe it is. Far from unwatchable, I'm afraid this one will end up with a fate far more troubling: being forgettable.
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