‘My staff are desperate to know if you get free Weetabix...’
While most film critics despise being forced to feel actual human emotions, the rest of us love a bit of sentimentality. While the likes of The Notebook and Dear John are easy to scoff at, they are also incredibly effective in their own way. We Live in Time is along the same vein as the aforementioned, but the presence of Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in the lead roles put an acceptable face on what is essentially a weepy romantic dramedy…
It’s the age old story, Tobias (Garfield) and Almut (Pugh), meet cute, fall in love, have a baby and then tragedy strikes. The twist is that director John Crowley presents this fairly straightforward narrative in a nonlinear form. This clever conceit adds an extra layer of emotional weight to the scenes that take place pre-tragedy in a similar (but much less horrifying) way as Casper Noe’s Irreversible.
Crowley has worked with Garfield before on the vastly underseen minor classic Boy A, and he wrings another strong performance out of him here. There is a scene in which Tobias catches Almut in a lie that is particularly powerful, and much of that is due to Garfield’s wounded vulnerability and easy charm. That being said, I didn’t actually like Tobias so much – he too often comes across as whatever the male version of a Mary Sue is called – a manic-pixie-dream-boy if you will. Pugh, however, is a force of nature, as ever. Delivering a layered and eminently watchable turn in which she is big when she needs to be and subtle when a lesser actor could easily have turned on the schmaltz, Pugh once again proves she is one of the most in demand actors of her generation. I like Garfield, and he is good here, but if we’re being honest, this is Pugh’s movie.
The film builds to a suitably emotional conclusion, and while I was invested the whole time, I never felt the same kind of emotional gut punch that Crowley delivered on Brooklyn, or even on the aforementioned Boy A. On this occasion, the journey is more effective than the destination.
We Live in Time was a modest success at the box office, and despite my flippant comparisons at the top, it’s a better film than many others in the doomed romance subgenre – Pugh’s terrific performance is worth the admission fee alone.
