One moment, award-winning chef Almut (Florence Pugh) is waking her beloved Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and asking him to sample her latest concoction, the next, it’s the middle of the night, and now-pregnant Almut is parked on the toilet while he times her contractions.
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Effective love stories are composed of moments large and small. In “We Live in Time,” John Crowley has made what’s meant to be a greatest-hits version of your typical romantic comedy, serving up all the key scenes from Almut and Tobias’ relationship — meeting one another’s families, the marriage proposal, parenthood, divorce, cancer diagnoses and so on — just not in that order.
It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories, and the sequence hardly matters. At least, that’s one interpretation of a film hatched by acclaimed playwright Nick Payne that seems so much less ambitious and lower-concept than his slender but brilliant one-act “Constellations,” a multiverse romance written way back in 2012, before multiverses were all the rage.
By contrast, there’s just one reality in “We Live in Time” — which is fine, since that’s how most humans experience life — but Crowley figures its emotional beats will presumably hit harder if presented in a more strategic order. Still fine, since practically all storytellers arrange scenes to suit their narrative, though rarely do they remix them in quite so arbitrary a fashion as this.
For example, minutes after that taste-test-in-bed scene, Tobias is back in the spare room of his father’s house, deciding what to eat before work (as a low-level employee of the Weetabix team). It’s confusing, to say the least, despite how bewilderingly sophisticated our brains have gotten at rearranging disjointed stories. If you could follow “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” then this “Some Things Sometimes in No Particular Order” should be a breeze. But it’s not, since mapping out nonlinear narratives is a fine art (see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or anything by Atom Egoyan), and this one errs in setting up certain events and then never circling back around to them.
Take away the sequencing gimmick, and you’re left with just another run-of-the-mill cancer drama. At the heart of this strangely straightforward A24 release is Almut’s diagnosis: Stage 3 ovarian cancer. Later we learn that this case is a recurrence of an earlier bout with the disease, during which Almut had to decide whether to remove a single impacted ovary or her entire uterus. But we already know what they decided, since the couple has a daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), whom we’ve seen shaving her mom’s head for round two.
While on the subject of timelines, it’s worth noting that Crowley has watched Andrew Garfield grow up. The director effectively discovered the then-future Spider-man star, first casting him as a juvenile delinquent in 2007’s “Boy A.” That means “We Live in Time” marks a reunion: a more mature project for both of them, but also a more manipulative one, as Crowley recognizes Garfield’s superpower — the watering eyes and quavering lips — and summons it at every step of their relationship.
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Rather than giving away where their decade-long love story takes them, consider only their first contact, when Almut blindsides Tobias with her car. That’s a memorable initial spark to be sure, except by the point Crowley shows it, we’ve already been to the hospital, so it’s slightly disorienting to untangle which of them is the patient (hint: it’s the one in the neck brace). “Meet cute. Die cuter.” That could be the tagline for a movie which is determined to make every scene as endearing and/or adorable as possible.
Cancer is an ugly disease, and if we accept it here as more than just a device, then “We Live in Time” could be a comfort. (Then again, the filmmakers seem so committed to forcing an emotional reaction, terminal illness could be a cynical page from the Nicholas Sparks playbook?) So many of the moments Crowley presents are touchstones in most people’s lives: the childbirth scene is a showstopper, and Tobias’ proposal — bashfully delivered at the end of a hallway lined with candles and carrots — ranks up there with Hugh Grant classics.
That approach gives people who’ve faced cancer a swoony romance to cling to, though this couple experiences such an idealized form of it, normal folks might come away feeling they’re doing it wrong. What “We Live in Time” succeeds in doing differently is taking the woman’s concerns seriously. Tobias wants Almut to marry him and make babies, but as an ultra-competitive personality, she has different priorities. At once vulnerable and independent, Pugh plays Almut with the self-respect to assert them.
Right after Almut’s second cancer diagnosis, she pulls Tobias aside and poses a hypothetical: What if, instead of submitting to another round of treatment, they were to live the coming months to the fullest? That’s a clue to the logic that could be operating beneath the movie’s kooky chronology, since Tobias clings to memories (the flashbacks may well be his, told mostly through his perspective) whereas Almut insists on seizing each remaining moment (her commitment to a culinary competition drives the plot forward).
Who doesn’t love a gourmet cooking scene or several? They balance things nicely, wedged between make-ups, breakups and snogging. Several times, Crowley teaches up the best way to crack eggs (on a flat surface). If only there were a way to unscramble his movie.
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