Right 'round (Image via A24)
In We Live in Time, the relationship of a couple passionately engaged with life and each other is revealed in a nonlinear series of scenes, a novel way of getting to the meat of who they are as individuals, and who they are together.
The story is complicated by their unconventional meeting, their being at odds over whether to have children, her devotion to her career as a chef and, most dauntingly, multiple bouts of cancer.
Almut (Florence Pugh) is a driven Type A personality, an accomplished chef who knows exactly what she wants. Her life takes an unexpected detour when she bumps into Tobias (Andrew Garfield), a glistening-eyed, handsome divorcé, and they fall hopelessly in love. Their chemistry is undeniable — it's not hard to believe that she could talk him into letting her fight it out in a grueling cooking competition while undergoing cancer treatment, or that he could convince her to have a child.
The best thing about the film, which features rich performances from a pair of beautiful stars, is the way in which its unorthodox telling teases out issues of what makes life worth living, and who makes it worth living, not the mention jump-starting conversations about how we would like to go out, and how we would like to be remembered.
The worst? It is twee in parts, a little too feel-good to counteract the feel-badness of cancer, and Almut's decision to get pregnant — under her circumstances — had me squirming.
In the end (as in the beginning and middle), We Live in Time is an achingly deeply felt, grown-up drama that speaks to anyone thinking of settling down, or who did so long ago and may be considering acting up.
