Among today’s young acting talents, few possess the enviable combination of depth and charisma shared by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, who play to those considerable strengths as a contemporary British couple who find themselves facing a medical crisis in John Crowley’s deeply introspective We Live in Time.
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Handed its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Crowley’s 2019 drama, The Goldfinch , was less enthusiastically received, the film eschews a traditional, linear approach to the subject matter in favor of a looser construction that weaves together a vivid patchwork of timeframes and memories to deeply poignant effect.
For thematic inspiration, Crowley takes his cue from the Lou Reed song “Magic and Loss (The Summation),” and especially the lyrics, “There’s a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out,” in navigating the relationship between passionate, ambitious Almut (Pugh) and sensitive, attentive Tobias (Garfield).
Meeting each other in their 30s as fully-formed individuals with well-defined pasts and a clear sense of their wants and desires, Almut and Tobias proceed to set up house in South London’s verdant Herne Hill. She’s the chef in her own restaurant, and he, still raw from a divorce, is the corporate marketing face of Weetabix cereal.
Despite differing on wanting to raise a family — he’s raring to go, she’s unsure — they eventually end up having daughter Ella (Grace Delaney) after some difficulty getting pregnant, and would seem to be living an idyllic life when Almut receives a devastating diagnosis: a recurrence of ovarian cancer.
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Rather than taking a conventional “where do we go from here?” approach, the unique script by playwright Nick Payne is more concerned with “how did we arrive at this place?” The film divides their story into three distinct time periods of varying lengths and re-splices them together in ways more interesting than standard chronological order. The approach allows for a series of lovely/surprising/amusing moments, from Tobias getting the back of his neck tenderly trimmed by his doting dad (Douglas Hodge) to Almut laying in a bathtub, balancing a biscuit on her very pregnant tummy to — in one of the film’s more audaciously choreographed sequences — giving birth in a petrol station loo.
It’s all immersively recorded by cinematographer Stuart Bentley’s photography, which penetratingly captures the defining moments in the couple’s decade-long relationship without ever feeling intrusive. Quite frankly, Bentley wouldn’t have been required to do much more than simply point and shoot, what with the generosity of those gorgeously honest performances given by Crowley’s two highly accomplished leads.
There’s an achingly palpable, playful chemistry between Pugh and Garfield that leaps off the screen. But they also refuse to shy away from letting their characters’ less attractive qualities bleed through. Beneath Tobias’ soulful eyes there’s an undercurrent of passive-aggressiveness that isn’t his best feature. Meanwhile, Almut’s silky-smoky voice can’t gloss over the painful frustration the disease is causing her when she insists on taking part in a prestigious international cooking competition despite her deteriorating condition and her husband’s concerns, protesting, “I don’t want my relationship with Ella to be defined by my decline.”
When that decline ultimately leads to the tragically inescapable and time reverts back to its chronological default, Crowley takes leave with the same tender yet truthful touch that informs the entire production. While We Live in Time and its subject matter might not lay claim to the audience uplift of Crowley’s Oscar-nominated Brooklyn , seldom has such an unflinchingly honest take on mortality felt so transcendently life-affirming.
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