We Live in Time Review: LFF 2024

Strong performances propel weepy We Live in Time

Director John Crowley is the film maker behind my all-time favourite Saoirse Ronan movie – Brooklyn (no small feat in a career of gems) so I approached his latest, We Live in Time with some level of excitement. The tragic romantic drama is helmed by two of the UK’s brightest talents, Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, making it an all-round enticing package.

Chef Almut (Pugh) hits recent divorcee Tobias (Garfield) with her car. It’s a pretty great meet cute. After taking him for an apology dinner sparks fly between the two, and pretty instantly they are embarking on a relationship for the ages. We Live in Time follows a non-linear story, flitting back and forth between multiple points in the couples lives as they slowly fall in love and start a family.

Yet as we jump back and fore in the timeline of their love story we never reach beyond a certain point. This is a tragedy after all, and a few years into their relationship Almut learns she has cancer. All the following great and significant moments we see are coloured by this knowledge, as we watch a young couple attempt to make the most of every single moment they have together with no certainty of how long it will last.

Garfield and Pugh are a perfect pairing, two naturally charismatic actors who judge perfectly when to be awkward, when to be confident, when to push the emotion. Garfield is an endearing, stuttering Mr Darcy type with a penchant for eating biscuits in the bath. Almut a confident, commanding woman with an endless well of patience at her core. They’re both brought to life by their delightful foibles and the innate chemistry of these two actors. It’s a joy to watch them fall in love.

We Live in Time is far too transparent in its desire to tug at your heart strings though, and I found myself slightly irritated by how unnecessarily perfect a picture it paints of its characters’ lives. Almut isn’t just a chef, she’s a world renowned, Michelin starred chef. The couple don’t just get a house together, they get a literal fairytale cottage in the countryside. Their story is a pulpy romance designed to create an unattainable dream world only to then mar it to enhance the tragedy. It felt like Nick Payne’s script didn’t trust audiences to have a strong enough emotional connection to these characters if they weren’t living a perfect, unattainable life.

That we have an emotional connection to them at all is only due to the magnificent performances of Garfield and Pugh, who add dynamism and nuance into quite one-dimensional characters. We Live in Time has some great humour in its early scenes before these two manage to wring absolute heartbreak out of each other over the course of its runtime. They truly run the full emotional gauntlet and it’s penultimate, hauntingly beautiful scene will stay with you long after the credits roll.

Ultimately, I just felt a little emotionally blue balled by this film. I’d heard its reputation and I’d gone in ready to have a good cry, only to be left feeling a little cold and unbothered about it all. Still, it was clearly effective for the majority of the rest of the audience as there was barely a dry eye in the house; so, go in with no expectations and you’re likely to leave satisfied. Whether or not audiences fall in love with We Live in Time they’ll certainly fall in love with Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh.

We Live in Time is playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2024. It’s available in some countries already but will not be released in the UK until 1st January 2025

Check out other great reviews from LFF 2024 here