We Live in Time

A24 has become such a hotbed for elevated horror and highbrow sci-fi that it’s weird to see the studio putting out a simple human interest romantic dramedy. That’s exactly We Live in Time: as sweet, wholesome, and weepie as R-rated cinema gets in 2024.

Almut (Florence Pugh) does more than just meet Tobias (Andrew Garfield). She hits him with his car as he, bathrobed and dazed from the divorce papers he is to sign, reaches for a candy he’s dropped in the middle of the road. But that’s not where our story begins, because screenwriter Nick Payne (The Sense of an Ending, Netflix’s “The Crown”) chooses to leap around chronologically. The nonlinearity is needless and does not appear to alter or enhance the straightforward story of Almut and Tobias’ love.

Despite its best efforts to appear complex or challenging, We Live in Time still evokes British romance of a different era, namely the early films written by Richard Curtis. You could do so much worse than to remind a viewer of charming ’90s hits like Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Payne and director John Crowley (the lovely Oscar-nominated immigration tale Brooklyn and the less lovely but not meritless The Goldfinch) seem eager to invite comparisons to the likes of the inventive Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Curtis’ last good film, 2013’s About Time. Their jumpy presentation achieves little other than to dole out intermittent disorientation, as you need a moment to establish where the couple is at in their relationship and where Almut is on life’s journey as she juggles pregnancy and ovarian cancer.

The achronological approach is not enough to derail the tender, heartwarming, and well-acted romance at hand. With lesser talents in the lead roles, this film would be easy to dismiss and ridicule as sentimental or emotionally manipulative. But Garfield and Pugh are not lesser talents. Over the past fifteen years, he has displayed an uncanny knack for only making films of substance. Pugh’s run as a serious actress only dates back five years and is less universally agreeable, but she’s clearly in demand and wisely opting to collaborate with top-notch directors like Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan, and Denis Villeneuve.

Crowley is not on the level of those masters, yet, but he’s mostly directed television in the years since Brooklyn, which remains one of last decade’s better films. His work may not be dripping with flair or visual ingenuity, but they deliver heart, humor, and humanity, a trifecta that tends to trump the hollow spectacle that generally outsells it. As with Brooklyn, Crowley takes something that on paper sounds conventional and like possible awards bait and turns it into something with true passion and emotion. One can argue that Payne stacks the deck in favor of Tobias, turning him into a saint while ambitious chef Almut secretly chooses to enter a prestigious cooking competition instead of marrying him. But, as they often do in real life, everyone’s actions here have reasons and consequences.

I suspect this film is too small and old-fashioned to either make a huge splash at the box office or compete for major awards like Brooklyn did. But I hope that A24’s grip on the cineaste community helps this get noticed, something it did not seem to do for the studio’s rewarding summer offerings Sing Sing and Janet Planet.