WE LIVE IN TIME is a sub-Richard Curtis attempt at a tragicomic romance from director John Crowley (BROOKLYN) and writer Nick Payne (A SENSE OF AN ENDING). The film is so mannered and meet-cute and interior designed to within an inch of its life that I was utterly alienated from it. Its utter lack of authenticity robbed me of emotional engagement with what should’ve been a deeply emotional film.
Andrew Garfield (THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE) gurns his way through the film as the nerdy and conventional Tobias (oh yes!) who is run over by the 2024 version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl played by Florence Pugh (DUNE: PART TWO). Pugh’s Almut Bruehl (oh yes!) is a cool, unconventional, highly competitive, bisexual hipster chef. They fall in love, break up over whether to have children, she gets cancer, they have a kid, she gets cancer again, wins a cooking competition and dies. That’s literally it.
There’s no emotional growth or even emotional tension beyond a small spat at the start when the man asks the woman if she wants kids. The excruciatingly embarrassing and improbable meet-cute is trumped by an even more excruciating and improbable birth-cute? Worst of all, there’s no dramatic tension because the film has a non-linear structure.
What a waste of a fine actress.
WE LIVE IN TIME is rated R and has a running time of 107 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2024. It was released in the USA on October 11th and will be released in the UK on Jan 1st 2025.
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