We Live in Time Review: A Blissful Romance

We Live in Time is the newest film from John Crowley, who has directed such movies like Brooklyn and The Goldfinch. It stars Andrew Garfield as Tobias and Florence Pugh as Almut, they meet in an unexpected way and start to fall in love, but  when Almut gets a cancer diagnosis, this makes their time fleeting together. They decide to embrace the moments instead of dreading what is next to come. 

We Live in Time is a delightful movie. Some might say that it treads familiar ground as other tragic romances, and it certainly does but the film does find surprising avenues to make this romance feel fresh. The film is told not in a chronological order, but it has three timelines that are interspersed through the movie. This is a wonderful way to illustrate the way we all perceive time. When looking back on a life spent, we hardly ever just look at everything in a linear fashion but instead pick up the highlights. The happy moments, the hard moments and the confusing moments. This makes the narrative of We Live in Time feel so impactful. They choose what moments to focus on and make it feel like we as the audience are also feeling these memories. 

Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are absolutely wonderful in this movie as the two main leads. They have wonderful chemistry with one another and hit their humorous bits and dramatic moments so convincingly. The film does a great job juxtaposing these two emotions as well. This film could have been a drag as we saw two people in grief knowing their time is limited together, but instead the film's central message is to appreciate and embrace the time you have with one another. While there are certainly sad moments in the film, there’s also lots of moments of joy and hope. This is one of the funnier movies of the entire year, a witty script and great banter makes for a lot of laugh out loud moments.

Some of the sequences even have great direction behind them. A scene that includes a gas station is one of the most well helmed and executed sequences of film this year. There are craftsmen behind this movie. It could have looked and sounded like a Hallmark movie so easily but the filmmakers find every avenue to make this movie feel cinematic in scope and scale while telling an intimate and personal story.

Overall, We Live in Time is a sweeping romance that will certainly find its audience. This is one of the more accessible films A24 has in its catalog and I can see this film being a hit with not only critics but audiences.