‘We Live in Time’ review: Garfield, Pugh lead out-of-time romance
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh have a delightful chemistry that carries the romantic drama "We Live in Time" over its rougher patches and needlessly off-balance framework.
Has the pair done five movies together? Six? Wait, "We Live in Time" is their first pairing. How can this be? They're so affable together and comfortable with one another that they already seem like a classic movie pair. Well if they're not one yet, maybe they will be now.
Garfield is breakfast biscuit rep Tobias Durand and Pugh is high-end chef Almut Brühl, and the pair meets cute when she hits him with her car. That scene happens well after viewers have met the pair and as we're getting to know them in bits and pieces, through director John Crowley's ("Brooklyn," "The Goldfinch") nonlinear storytelling.
Sometimes that mode of storytelling is deliberately goofy-footed. Just before Tobias is hit by the car, we see him signing divorce papers. Oh no, is their relationship over? And then he's hit by the car, and we see him wake up in the hospital across from Almut. Is she there just to check up on him?
No, it turns out this is their meeting, which is presented as an audience gotcha, even though the gotcha itself - that moment of questioning, "huh?" - doesn't necessarily add anything to the story. It's just a way to pull one over on the audience, a needless gimmick that momentarily takes viewers out of the story when they should be diving in.
Elsewhere, we hop around the couple's love story. Almut isn't sure she wants children, but we see the couple has a daughter. And early on we learn that Almut is battling cancer, the details of which are parsed out over the course of the story.
A central scene has Almut explaining to Tobias that rather than going through cancer treatment and having 12 bad months, she'd prefer to not undergo treatment and have six great months instead. So however the story is told, it's clear where it's headed.
Even when the script by Nick Payne gets a little too cutesy - the birth scene in the convenience store bathroom immediately comes to mind - Garfield and Pugh make it worth the ride. The pair has a romantic, friendly partnership that reads extremely well on screen. They complement each other, and they complement the work.
They're both dialed in, emotionally intelligent performers, and it's easy to buy into them living a life that we're only occasionally dropping in on. So when Almut wants to risk her health to enter a chef competition both for personal reasons and to prove something to her daughter, you believe her, and you believe Tobias' reaction to her decision. It's what great performers do: they make you believe, and they make everything around them a little bit better.
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'WE LIVE IN TIME'
Grade: B
MPA rating: R (for language, sexuality and nudity)
Running time: 1:47
How to watch: Now in theaters
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This story was originally published October 18, 2024, 11:59 AM.
