Released: 16th January
Seen: 17th June
Sometimes a film doesn’t really need a great script, fancy camera tricks or an insane amount of special effects in order to be enjoyable. Sometimes, all a film needs in order to captivate an audience is a good central cast who can carry it through. Throughout history, there are endless numbers of films made almost entirely because one or two lead actors signed on and used their star power to push it into creation, one such example is What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? which basically exists because Bette Davis knew a film with her and Joan Crawford would be amazing. The combination of leads can create a truly special thing that will stand the test of time… and sometimes it can just be a pretty decent experience with a great pair of lead performances.
We Live In Time follows a decade-long romance between Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and the assorted difficulties they face. Told in a non-linear fashion, their relationship begins when Almut accidentally runs over Tobias with her car and slowly progresses from there, showing their relationship blossoming over the years, their undeniably powerful intimacy on full display as they move in together, have a child and deal with Almut’s repeated cases of cancer that create emotional beats throughout the movie. Through it all, our central leads are the undeniably charming characters one might expect them to be, given that Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield play them. If the concept of those two being in a pretty adorable relationship does nothing for you, then you might as well abandon ship now.
To put it bluntly, We Live In Time wouldn’t work without the two lead actors being who they are, it just flat out wouldn’t. No film has relied more on the charm and chemistry of its leads quite like this one does and boy, are they lucky they got two of the most charming actors working in Hollywood today who also happen to be the two actors who could have chemistry with a dead fish. It’s their raw power as performers that carries everything through, their interactions that make the whole damn thing work. You believe these two people are deeply in love because that’s just how good Florence and Andrew are as performers, you believe these people actually live together and that’s their actual daughter that they actually created together because goddamn it this pair of performers just can have chemistry with literally anyone. It’s honestly kind of stunning to witness the power of that chemistry in action, to the point that when the two leads aren’t in the same scene together you can feel the film actively suffering because of it.
The big thing that the lead actor’s charm helps with is that it counters the pretentious feeling that permeates the script, because, oh boy, for a film that’s just a simple romantic drama story, you can feel them trying so hard to make it seem like so much more than that. The non-linear style is clearly an attempt to say something profound, in reality it really doesn’t do much because the time jump isn’t so great that they can show off how old or young they can make the leads look and it’s not like they’re saying anything new about the nature of relationships so it feels like it’s just been done because highbrow artsy films play with linearity so why shouldn’t this film do it? It makes We Live In Time feel a lot more stilted in parts; the dialogue just doesn’t feel like it suits the setting. To put it bluntly, when your film calls a condom a “Prophylactic” with absolute sincerity, you might be pushing it a little with how pompous you’re being. Credit to both leads that this wordy dialogue feels even somewhat natural coming out of their mouths, in lesser mouths this might not only feel pretentious but also kind of stupid, at least with this pair of leads it can work at times.
Now, you might have noticed that this seems to be saying “The lead actors are good, that’s the only thing about this movie worth seeing”… good, I’m glad you noticed because that’s the central theme of this entire review. Everything else about We Live In Time is serviceable at best, the film looks pretty much like what you might expect a modern romantic drama to look like, the music and sound are at the exact level of cheesy you would expect, the actual dramatic tension of the film never rises above what you would gather a film in this genre would get to. It’s all just so much of the same stuff that there’s nothing to comment on. The film might be trying to make a commentary on grief or love, or family but it doesn’t do a particularly good job of it. It’s a romantic drama with a sad ending that you probably guessed when the word ‘cancer’ was thrown out in the plot description. It doesn’t have anything to really critique beyond those lead performances because it doesn’t really offer anything else. Perhaps if it did it might make for a better film but as it stands, it doesn’t have that.
Look, We Live In Time is a perfectly serviceable romantic drama that would be somewhat unwatchable if it didn’t have a pair of leads that can best be described as “The internet’s bisexual awakening”. The pure charm of the two leads pulls you in, their chemistry keeps you going, their heartbreaking emotional rawness is where the film gets its gut punches in. It can lean a little bit towards the pretentious and saccharine at times, they definitely overthought the script to a point where it could be grating if it wasn’t delivered this well by this pair of stars but if this pairing somehow does nothing for you then the film is probably not going to do anything either.
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