We Live in Time – first-look review

Every gen­er­a­tion gets the can­cer romance it deserves. In We Live in Time, which fea­tures a ten­der sex scene scored to a song by the singer of The xx, ter­mi­nal ill­ness gives an extra sense of urgency to an echt-mil­len­ni­al sto­ry about the push-pull of pro­fes­sion­al ambi­tion and fam­i­ly oblig­a­tion, and the com­pet­i­tive dri­ve to self-actu­al­ize in a cre­ative pro­fes­sion — about the desire to make the most of the time you have.

Almut (Flo­rence Pugh) is a chef who starts the film by whip­ping up a ​“Dou­glas fir par­fait” and ends it tweez­ing micro­greens onto a decon­struct­ed seafood tow­er; in between, she earns a rave from Jay Rayn­er and a Miche­lin star for her ​“mod­ern Euro­pean takes on clas­sic alpine dish­es,” such as an amuse-bouche of weis­s­wurst with lemon mus­tard gel. If We Live in Time must indulge in the played-out gas­tro trend, it has the right actress with which to do so: as any­one who watched her Insta­gram videos dur­ing lock­down will know, Miss Flo can crack an egg one-hand­ed like a pro.

She and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) meet cute when she Meet Joe Blacks him with her car as he wan­ders out into traf­fic to pick up a piece of choco­late orange; she’s a mag­net­ic chef on the rise and he’s a new­ly divorced sad­sack, and it’s dif­fi­cult to see what she sees in him aside from a screen­writer­ly con­trivance. (The orig­i­nal screen­play is by Nick Payne.) She feeds him well, he eats it up; she offers excite­ment and plea­sure, and he keeps her reg­u­lar (he works for Weet­abix), don­ning read­ers and assid­u­ous­ly tak­ing notes at all her doctor’s appointments.

The film unfolds over three time­lines, delin­eat­ed, as per tra­di­tion, by Almut’s three dis­tinct hair­styles. Across their courtship, they argue over whether they should con­tin­ue their rela­tion­ship giv­en their asym­met­ric feel­ings about hav­ing chil­dren — he wants them, but she’s not sure, until her first ovar­i­an can­cer diag­no­sis, and the option of a full hys­terec­to­my, scares her into fer­til­i­ty; the twee score by Bryce Dess­ner of The Nation­al (of course) swells when the preg­nan­cy test final­ly returns a pos­i­tive result.

On the day their daugh­ter is born, direc­tor John Crow­ley push­es epic set­pieces: pulling the Mini out of a tight park­ing space to dri­ve to the hos­pi­tal; Tobias feed­ing Almut jaf­fa cakes in the bath between con­trac­tions; and an epic birth in a petrol sta­tion loo, with Pugh on all fours in just a bra and mas­sive preg­nan­cy pros­thet­ic, scream­ing and sweat­ing and push­ing in a suit­ably vir­tu­oso per­for­mance – onscreen and off, Pugh nav­i­gates her fame with a con­stant aura of Main Char­ac­ter Ener­gy, which fits the dri­ven Almut and gives the film an appeal­ing­ly sub­stan­tial melo­dra­mat­ic scope.

Over the months when Almut’s can­cer returns, Almut shaves her head rather than lose her hair — we see Pugh receive the baby-butch buz­z­cut that she sport­ed so strik­ing­ly at last year’s Met Gala, with Garfield him­self man­ning the clip­pers along­side the tod­dler who plays their daugh­ter, in a scene that plays like a domes­tic idyll on the grounds of their cozy coun­try cot­tage. The dra­ma of this time­line hinges on Almut’s deci­sion to secret­ly enter an elite cook­ing com­pe­ti­tion while under­go­ing chemother­a­py (“I’m in train­ing for the Bocuse d’Or,” she final­ly con­fess­es, in a hushed, tear­ful yet steely voice); her ded­i­ca­tion to her voca­tion, even more so than her treat­ment or fam­i­ly in the time left, sparks the major mar­i­tal fight in the film.

Tick­ing clocks, lit­er­al and metaphor­i­cal, are the major motif here: a thir­tysome­thing career woman’s bio­log­i­cal clock and the min­utes between con­trac­tions; the kitchen timers count­ing down the min­utes to ser­vice, and sec­onds left in the com­pe­ti­tion to which Almut stakes her lega­cy; the life expectan­cy of a can­cer patient who is no longer respond­ing to the chemo, and how many more achieve­ments, or mem­o­ries, she can hope to pack in.

The time-hop­ping chronol­o­gy is, osten­si­bly, an elab­o­rate struc­tur­al con­ceit in con­ver­sa­tion with the film’s theme, but it feels large­ly ran­dom, or rather manip­u­la­tive – a way for the nar­ra­tive to with­hold reveals and build to three cli­max­es instead of one, and a way to hop­scotch from high­light to high­light when­ev­er things threat­en to become too pro­sa­ic. Both actors are the wrong age for their char­ac­ters – Pugh is too young for all but Almut’s ear­li­est scenes at 28, Garfield too old for all but Tobias’s lat­est scenes at 41 – but both are out­side aging in a mois­tur­ized movie-star kind of way, so the film seems to just float from high­light like a Great­est Hits album with an achrono­log­i­cal track listing.

This is sim­ply a gener­ic and bru­tal­ly effi­cient tear­jerk­er — like its title, it aspires to arche­typ­al grandeur and lands some­where bland­er. Hard­ly des­tined to be a gen­er­a­tional touch­stone, it will nev­er­the­less serve as a use­ful­ly dat­ed doc­u­ment for future view­ers, with its food-porn obses­sion, lush and morose minor-key twee music, and the dynam­ic between its high-achiev­ing mil­len­ni­al woman and devot­ed Wife Guy.