‘We Live in Time’ is a superb, time-shifting romance

Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh star in the story of a couple that goes backward and forward.

Between Challengers and now We Live in Time, it’s been quite a year for movies that go back and forth in across the years while also covering years in the life of its characters and still finding time to be sexy. 

The difference, of course, is that We Live in Time is only about two people, not three, and it leans further into a sweet romance with occasional conflict rather than the gamesmanship of Luca Guadagnino’s “sexy tennis movie.” 

Directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Payne, We Live in Time follows a couple named Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh), over about ten years. 

He’s an executive with the British cereal company Weetabix, while she’s a chef with her own restaurant and a spot in a high-stakes cooking competition that resembles Iron Chef. 

We see, albeit out of order, their meeting, courtship, occasional conflicts, and eventual parenthood and struggles with illness. 

Throughout, there’s plenty of time for sex scenes, including one reportedly so intense that the actors couldn’t hear the director yelling cut; like most Hollywood trade reporting about sex scenes in general, I have some skepticism about that whole story. (The whole thing with the carousel horse is much more wholesome and funnier.) 

The overall film is a success, thanks to a smartly structured script and winning performances from both leads. Pugh, in particular, is outstanding, doing some of her best work ever. In recent years, she’s starred in another twisty, sexy thriller (Don’t Worry Darling) and a movie whose entire plot flows from her hitting someone with her car (A Good Person), but We Live in Time is much better than either. 

In We Live in Time, we’re immediately thrown into the time-shifting gimmick, and the film is smart enough to let us figure out where we are in the narrative. The biggest clues, most of the time, center on Pugh’s hairstyle and whether or not she’s pregnant. This choice works, although the movie essentially abandons it about halfway through. 

Once the narrative becomes more linear, the film sets up its ultimate point: people should live their lives to the fullest with limited time.

I do have a few minor quibbles. Garfield has a doting single dad, but we never learn what happened to his mother, even as we get the entire backstory of the death of Pugh’s character’s father. Shouldn’t that have been explained, even with a line of dialogue, considering where the film ends? And I don’t know if I buy that a skinny wisp of a man like Andrew Garfield could successfully break down a heavy door. 

But overall, this is a winning film. And if the object is to induce tears, especially at the ending it goes with, then We Live in Time is a success.