As usual, A24 is on a rampage this year. The studio/distributor has released early the Oscar contenders Sing Sing and A Different Man. They’ve given us the horror gems MaXXXine and Love Lies Bleeding. They’ve made us think with Civil War and Planet Janet. They’ve even brought audiences two of the strangest films of the year with Tuesday and I Saw the TV Glow. And now, we’ve got their innovative little love story, We Live in Time.
We Live in Time is about a talented chef named Almut (Florence Pugh from Midsommar) and a smart marketing exec named Tobias (The Amazing Spider-Man himself, Andrew Garfield). The two meet in a chance encounter, fall in love, and navigate the blue skies and stormy weather of a ten-year relationship.
The story of We Live in Time is typical sappy romance stuff. The approach that writer Nick Payne (Wanderlust) and director John Crowley (Brooklyn) take, however, is anything but. The plot unfolds non-linearly, showing different sections of Almut and Tobias’ relationship at a time and giving the viewer information in the seemingly random order that Crowley wants to provide it.
This skipping around does make the events in We Live in Time a bit difficult to follow at times. With very few time-based landmarks, it can be tricky to figure out what point in the ten-year span of Almut and Tobias’ journey the film is showing at any particular moment. Once the viewer gets over this hump, however, everything clicks into place. It’s just one more thing that makes an already fascinating movie even more fascinating.
Like any good love story, We Live in Time is only as good as its lead characters, and luckily, Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield are at the top of their game here. The actors make their characters human, which helps the audience sympathize with and care about them not just as individuals, but as a supportive couple.
As such, the audience is not forced or asked to take sides. There are no good guys or bad guys here, just as it should be in a movie like this. Neither Almut nor Tobias are depicted as villainous or “wrong,” so when there is friction in the relationship, the audience feels for them as a unit. There is little question (if any) that they belong together, even when they do have more downs than ups.
The lack of a tangible antagonist in We Live in Time does not mean there is no drama in the movie. There’s plenty of conflict, it just all comes from outside. It’s just Almut and Tobias against the forces that oppose them. They are tested and challenged in many ways during their ten-year journey, and what makes the movie compelling is seeing how they rise to those tests and challenges.
So essentially, with We Live in Time, A24 has given us the most A24 romance that they can. It’s quirky without being too left-of-center, it’s experimental while remaining mainstream, and, most importantly, it’s simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking. It’s about as A24 as A24 movies get.
GRADE: B
MPAA Rating: R for language, sexuality, and nudity
Release Date: October 18, 2024 (wide)
Running Time: 1 hour 48 minutes
This post was last modified on April 30, 2025 11:21 am