Joyce Glasser reviews We Live in Time (January 1, 2025) Cert. 15, 107 mins. In Cinemas
The romantic comedy’s dominance was challenged after the success of Love Story in 1970 with an increasing number of romantic tragedies where young lovers, or the odd parent, must contend with fatal illness. There is not only the classy classic, The Fault in our Stars, but variations on a theme, such as My Life Without Me, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, PS I Love You and last year’s Tuesday, in which Julia-Louis Dreyfuss must combat a giant CGI talking bird to connect to her dying daughter.
How do you top that? In coming up with the script for We Live in Time, director John Crowley (Brooklyn) and his scriptwriter, Constellations playwright Nick Payne, must have deliberated over how to reinvent, or, at least, breathe some new life into the romantic weepie when the formula has been stretched to breaking point.
They opted for the out-of-sequence format, one that Payne toyed with in his hit stage play Constellations. But the most obvious similarity is that the play and We Live in Time both feature young lovers who face the woman’s cancer diagnosis together.
Don’t be alarmed. It’s not giving anything away in this movie to tell you that Almut Brühl (Pugh), a former ice skater turned award-winning Anglo-Bavarian fusion chef gets a cancer diagnosis, just after meeting the love of her life, Weetabix™ employee Tobias Durand (Garfield).

They date, plan to get married, have a daughter, despite career-minded Almut’s initial reluctance, consult various doctors together, and argue when Almut seems to put her culinary ambitions above her health and the belated marriage ceremony.
But that’s the linear narrative. In the film, the cancer diagnosis is ticked off early on in the film. The scene where we learn that Almut’s cancer is returning after remission comes before the scene where Almut and Tobias meet.
And the meet-cute seems to belong to another film. It establishes the quirky, spunky, zestful, pretty blond with a penchant for tight t-shirts, as someone so true to the romantic comedy mould that you never believe she belongs in a romantic tragedy.
Tobias is signing his divorce papers when his only pen runs out of ink and distracted, he gets hit by a car while going out to buy another. The driver is the above-cited blond who flirts with the bruised and bandaged patient in the hospital corridor. To compensate, she invites him to the restaurant where she’s working.
The nonlinear narrative might not be a gimmick, but if it’s to mimic thought and memory, which are not linear, the idea is misplaced. Instead, it kills the tension and our emotional trajectory. The dramatic irony Shakespeare used sparingly denies us the same experience as the characters. Although the ending is linear, if you do not cry, it can only be because you’ve had time to diffuse the tears and the emotional climax that produces them.
The non-linear structure is, at times, confusing. We see Tobias, living at his parents’ home, sprucing up for either an interview with Weetabix™ or his first day at work there. In another scene we see him standing before a group of executives doing what might be an advertisement for the brand, although whether this is part of his recruitment, a marketing presentation. or whether he is appearing in a commercial is uncertain.
But before we learn more about his work for the cereal company, Tobias’s career disappears and the emphasis shifts to Almut’s career, where it remains. In fact, the film turns into a social drama on family vs career and can a woman have it all. Almut justifies her decision: she wants to leave her daughter a legacy, something other than pain and suffering to remember her by. Fair enough.

If Tobias’s career disappears, the same is true with his character. He is neither fun nor sexy, because he becomes a carer and the empty vessel holding down the family. He shows no ambition, while Almut seemingly puts hers before her health, her child or her marriage. Tobias becomes a foil to Almut more than an equal, and when he is not waiting at home for her, he is ready to support her where ever, with no discussion of the impact this burden is taking on his work, his health, his hobbies or his relationship with family and friends (if he has any).
When someone has cancer, it’s a time for friends and the family to emerge and support the victim and her partner. But Tobias’s family recedes into the background and there’s no sign of Almut’s. Friends, too, disappear, although Almut – there are suggestions she is bisexual – depends on her sous chef Jade (a notable performance from Lee Braithwaite) to prepare for and get through the competition.
Florence Pugh (Don’t Worry Darling, Little Women, Lady Macbeth) and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge, The Amazing Spider Man, The Social Network) are great actors, and are easy on the eye. But that’s not enough. The characterisations work against the actors’ natural chemistry as you never quite believe Almut is a real person and you never understand what she sees in the insipid Tobias, if not a steadfast carer.