Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield try their best to make us weep in We Live in Time
“My staff are desperate to know if you get free Weetabix”
For anyone familiar with Nick Payne’s work in the theatre, the idea that he might try to break our hearts with a love story told in an unconventional manner won’t come as any surprise. His superlative Constellations did just that by exploring parallel universes and the worlds of new stories that comes from making different decisions. His film We Live in Time adopts a less complex but still intriguing non-linear narrative, bringing more interest to a fairly bog-standard weepie.
There’s a slight sense that we might have expected more. With Payne on board and Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh as leads, a notion had crept in that John Crowley’s film might be a cut above your average but whilst it might not necessarily deliver in that respect, it does absolutely have that feel of a strong mid-budget movie, the like of which we’re very much seeing less and less of in these times.
We Live in Time tracks the relationship between Almut and Tobias over a decade or so but as we constantly skitter around the fractured timeline, the strength of Payne’s writing is brought to bear. Conversations about whether to have children smash into the cruelty of a returning cancer diagnosis into the realities of parenting in a time of crisis into the joy of a madcap meet-cute into exploring the importance of living life to the full.
Garfield and Pugh radiate chemistry and each is able to modulate to perfection the varying degrees of love and hurt that accompany each stage of this jagged rollercoaster. His fear of not being enough, her determination to achieve, his acknowledgement of her needs, her fear of what her legacy will be. There’s tearful and tricky conversations aplenty and a real sense of emotional investment available. For all this, I didn’t cry half as much as I was expecting to but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
