A24’s ‘WE LIVE IN TIME’ a Thoughtful Melodrama About Quality Time, With Strong Leads

We live in time, but John Crowley’s film exists across it. An emotional portrait of a relationship unfolding across a number of years, Crowley’s romantic drama allows audiences to experience Almut and Tobias’ love story in an unconventional and nonlinear manner. Their meet-cute coincide with scenes of their later life as parents of a young daughter, punctuated by other moments throughout the beginning, middle, and end of their time together – free-form, finite and infinite. This creates a mosaic of the moments that make up a marriage – deep love, tragedy, lust, betrayal, make-up sex, arguments, flirtation – swirling in and amongst each other, unbound by the usual constraints of time.

The result is somewhat dreamlike – and mostly spellbinding. We’re often not entirely certain where in the chronology of Almut and Tobias’ story we have found ourselves – and the lack of obvious context bring forth a certain surprise and joy to the way that Crowley (of the three-time Oscar nominated film, Brooklyn) unspools the sensitive script from Nick Payne. Yes, there are familiar “falling in love” clichés you could point to, but the film remains grounded in enough earnest specificity and character to sweep up even those who think themselves resistant to standard fare rom-com charm. Add in a pair of utterly charming performances from Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield and this sweeping two-hander becomes a potent romantic drama well worth the emotional investment and eventual tearjerking.

Almut and Tobias are from different worlds: he’s a corporate divorceé, she’s an ultra competitive culinary maven. But beneath the surface of their labels and their pasts, there’s bond feels immediate, forged in communication and care. The film’s structural untethering from linear time speaks to the timelessness of love—its harmonious pairing of urgency and patience. While some may find the sentiment sappy, I found a beautiful ode to the power of family and quality time. When Almut’s cancer returns and threatens that time, the pair are forced to question what is more important: the quality of that time or its quantity?

Almut is hardheaded and driven and Pugh imbues her with a mix of guarded grit and reluctant vulnerability. In her darkest moments, Almut’s instinct is to retreat, doubling down on her personal and professional objectives – cancer be damned – and Pugh commandingly makes her pain, her grief, her joy, her passion feel lived in and real. Garfield proves a worthy matchup for Pugh, balancing her ferocious determination with a bookish knack for detail. He’s a planner through and through, a quality that is a gift and curse. But his desire to communicate openly – sometimes too much, too quickly – is grounded in genuine and goodness. As good as they each are, it’s their effortless chemistry that shines brightest.

At times, the freewheeling structure of We Live In Time can feel aimless, lacking clear character arcs or thematic progression. Yet the film’s kaleidoscopic nature creates a kind of holistic depth that a more linear version might not capture. By the end, I felt as if I’d spent a small lifetime with these characters—in their joy, their pain, their bliss, and their horror. Yes, it’s sometimes depressing, but it’s also prophetic. We may not all face a cancer diagnosis, but life is finite. Our love and appreciation for it shouldn’t be.

CONCLUSION: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield bring heated chemistry to this romantic tragedy about a years-long love story complicated by a cancer diagnosis. John Crowley elevates this two-hander melodrama by treating the characters and their situations with care and specificity.