'We Live in Time' Review

We Live in Time had its World Premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on October 11.

Emotional cinema has become a form that isn’t discussed enough. Movies in this body, like 2014’s The Fault in Our Stars and 2016’s Manchester By the Sea, are defined by how sad their story is, and it can either make or break the movie. Audiences usually talk about how much they cried while watching a film of that scale. A movie in this subcategory often finds itself in conversations as a potential awards season contender. This subject has been the big selling point of John Crowley’s latest romantic dramedy, We Live in Time. He and the marketing team have been playing big into this being a potential Oscar contender and one helluva tear-jerker.

Crowley enlists the help of Oscar nominees Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh to bring We Live in Time to life. Both can do no wrong with the material and are often cute together. In fact, the movie overall seems good on paper. After awkwardly meeting in a car accident, Tobias and Almut (Garfield and Pugh, respectively) fall in love and start a life together. Despite never being married, they share a three-year-old daughter and live a quiet life in the UK countryside. Suddenly, Almut becomes diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and the two learn how to live their lives to the fullest given the circumstances. It’s a straightforward plot, but its big twist is that it’s told nonlinearly.

There’s no harm or foul in a synopsis like this, but the movie offensively tries to play itself as a tear-jerker with humorous moments. There’s a moment when Almut and Tobias are trying to tell their daughter about Almut’s diagnosis, and a magician attempts to perform a trick for them. Almut and Tobias try to ask him to leave, but he refuses until Tobias raises his voice. While Crowley intended for moments like this to bring some lightheartedness to the movie, it felt forced. The only occasion this wasn’t the case was when Almut gave birth to their daughter, and everything unfolded, resulting in baffling hilarity. Both Garfield and Pugh can bring humor into any scene, and it works, but in the case of this movie, it feels wrong for them. They’re not responsible, however, as Nick Payne’s script and Crowley’s direction call for this, and it feels out of place. 

Garfield and Pugh have won audiences over in their years of being in the spotlight individually. Their chemistry was a big thing to anticipate for fans going into this movie, as their behind-the-scenes photos together looked nothing but adorable. Although it didn’t speculate dating rumors like Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney did for Anyone But You, it sure did get people talking. The trailer also hyped it up vastly with how enigmatic and hearty there the two were.

The end result of all this? They were simply fine together. They knew how to play off each other and bring tonal balance to whatever was happening on screen, but they weren’t anything irresistible compared to a couple like Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Most audiences, especially die-hard fans of the two, will go wild for them being together on screen and eat up every second of each scene. I just won’t be counted in that statistic.

We Live in Time is a sour melodrama trying to pawn itself off as a dramedy. Failing to strike each and every chord that comes with a supposed tear-jerker film, it’s without a doubt one of the biggest letdowns of the year. To think that it came from the director who made Brooklyn, a movie that knew exactly how to balance drama and humor, shocks me that that method didn’t apply here. Call it a fall from grace or a one-hit wonder, but John Crowley couldn’t redeem himself here. Garfield and Pugh try to pick up the slack for him, and although their efforts are close to courageous, they aren’t enough to get the movie back on its feet. A misfire for A24 and everyone involved, We Live in Time will likely live to see itself as a failed Oscar bait movie whose relevance will be…let’s say, on borrowed time.