The trailer for We Live in Time felt like a knife in the throat, and watching the film was like having my head sliced clean off.
Don’t worry; that’s as graphic as this review will get. Thankfully, for love-starved cinephiles, audiences are finally getting their fill on romance and not CGI roadkill. After a stretch of post-pandemic, action-packed blockbusters, the film world seems to be craving a breather with romance stepping in to fill that void. Instead of the cinematic chaos that has dominated theaters in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, viewers have embraced the joy and familiar comfort of love stories. Films like We Live in Time have tapped into something simpler yet profound: the desire for connection.
The film follows the relationship of Tobias Durand (Andrew Garfield) and Almut Brühl (Florence Pugh) in a decade as they meet, fall in love, and grapple with her stage three ovarian cancer diagnosis. It’s sweet and honest in its portrayal of the fear that coincides with budding love and the uncertainty of family planning, but it’s not easy to digest. More than anything it was a reminder that love stories can be just as intense as thrillers.
Aside from the anxiety-inducing ‘will she or won’t she die in the end’ storyline, the movie was also less digestible because of the editing style. Scenes are presented as non-linear vignettes, cut together with sequences and music that don’t connect. It’s easy to get lost in the narrative as the movie jumps between four timelines. This purposefully jumbled script is not for everyone, especially those who like a straightforward romance film with a clear rising action and denouement. However, that’s one of the elements Director John Crowley and Editor Justine Wright implement to make this film stand out from the generations of doomed romances before them. It’s abrupt but rhythmic in its own pattern of chaotic sequencing.
However jumbled, it felt raw and like something that hadn’t been seen in the post-Covid era of filmmaking. The trend speaks to a cultural shift, a post-crisis intrigue for gentler stories that explore human relationships rather than human extinction.
The film opens with Almut and Tobias at the doctor’s office weighing their options about her diagnosis—six months of living life to the fullest versus a year of intense chemo that could only slow the cancer from spreading, not eliminate it. The film then cuts to Tobias’ life right before he meets Almut. He’s an average guy who works for a British breakfast company called Weetabix and travels often for his job. His narrative is singular with no romantic partners or friends shown on screen, although we see his father from time to time. I noticed he liked to take baths and that’s where it got interesting.
After a bath where he’s shown eating Weetabix miserably in a hotel tub, he sets out to find a working pen to sign his divorce papers. Donning only his bathrobe, he walks to the nearest store, buys the pen, then absentmindedly walks onto a busy road and gets hit by Almut’s car. A hospital scene follows where our on-screen lovers conclude their not-so-cute, ‘meet-cute’ moment. Over time we see them interacting in all stages of relationship bliss in the standard rom-com montage scenes—Chef Almut teaching Tobias to make eggs (you crack them on a flat surface, she instructs), riding carousel horses, the two of them having hot sex in multiple areas of their apartment, Almut peeing on a stick both hoping she got pregnant during her first remission, the obligatory scene of Tobias freaking out on the way to the hospital. It was all very standard but still performed so tenderly.
It’s a movie that would fall apart with less talented actors who aren’t as good at making a simple script feel organic. Pugh and Garfield carried this film on their backs and it showed in every moment they shared on screen.
I admit, maybe I’m just a hopeless romantic, which in my defense is definitely the target audience for this film, but, I found myself happily drowning in sentimentality more times than I care to admit. There was something about Tobias being so overcome with emotion that he couldn’t finish reading his marriage proposal letter to Almut that had me trying to figure out if my popcorn bucket would stifle the sound of my sobs better than my packet of Sour Patch Kids. But that’s what this movie does so well. In its seemingly template-like premise and jumpy narrative, the short moments of vulnerability aren’t forgotten. Cue: their daughter Ella being born in a gas station bathroom as one of the most memorable birth scenes in a major film in years.
But aside from gut-wrenching scenes like that one, we see strong character-defining moments from both protagonists that show just how well-rounded they are as individuals. Almut’s attitude and opinions are refreshingly brazen and well written especially about her initial non-committal stance on having children when Tobias says it’s a dealbreaker for him, “I’m 30 fucking 4. Ease up with the biological clock bullshit. I’m just not the kind of person who’s comfortable making that promise.” Meanwhile, Tobias’s teary-eyed sensitivity is a welcome contrast to the machismo that’s dominated the screen in post-pandemic franchises like Fast & Furious and Marvel.
People will remember this couple for a long time; in ways so dissimilar from any other popular romance film. It shows us that romance’s comeback isn’t just about escapism; it’s about a shift in how people want to process the roller coaster of recent years and see their lived experiences portrayed on screen. Pugh and Garfield are solid actors who can evoke a genuine connection that is profoundly felt in their performances – which are as memorable as they are heartbreaking. We Live in Time reminds us that in a world where survival feels like the default mode, watching people choose love and life over fear can be the best kind of catharsis.
