The two stars can't overcome this film's timid, time-hopping marriage story.
(2 stars)
"We Live in Time" belongs to a hardy, much-loved and critically maligned movie subtype, the Dying Lover Romantic Weepie -- a genre so generic that the most famous example is literally titled "Love Story." That was more than 50 years ago, and we as a society have evolved to the point that heroines no longer die of what Roger Ebert once called "Ali MacGraw's Syndrome" and the rest of us just refer to as Mysterious Movie Wasting Disease.
No, in "We Live in Time," the diagnosis, delivered early on, is as horribly specific -- ovarian cancer -- as the film itself is oddly mild. Written by Nick Payne ("The Last Letter From Your Lover") and directed by John Crowley ("Brooklyn"), it's a time-hopping marriage story that seems to want to wring our tears but is too timid or tasteful to really do so. There is one fresh narrative idea here, but it takes forever to get to it.
One reason we go to the movies, of course, is to watch attractive people and have a good cry, and "Time" at least fulfills the first part of the bargain. Andrew Garfield plays Tobias and Florence Pugh plays Almut, and because this is a British production, the two actors get to keep their accents. Tobias does something for a living that's mentioned once or twice and promptly forgotten because it's not important to the story, but Almut is a talented and fiercely ambitious London chef, which makes "We Live in Time" a little like "The Bear," if Carmy had a terminal illness. (Almut's specialty is Bavarian fusion, and if there's a joke in there, the movie doesn't make it.)
The film jumps around in their relationship, slicing and dicing their moments as a couple for no real reason other than that linear chronology would make the story one long trudge to the grave. Screenwriter Payne comes up with one of the more spectacularly violent meet-cutes in recent movie memory -- kids, do not try this at home -- and, not too much later, a rush-to-the-hospital childbirth scene with some of the film's most relatable laughs. Tobias also has to embarrassingly proclaim his love for Almut in front of a crowd because this is legally required of all British romantic movies under the Hugh Grant Statute of 1999.
The stages of Almut's cancer are presented to us piecemeal and out of sequence, too, perhaps to underscore the character's stoicism, which Pugh conveys very well, while downplaying the panic, which she signals in more subtle ways. Early on, it's made clear that Almut is opting to refuse a second round of chemotherapy and allow the disease to progress, which Tobias accepts tearfully and rather easily. The film gives her a bevy of interesting restaurant friends, played by interesting actors such as Aoife Hinds (daughter of Ciarán) and newcomer Lee Braithwaite as Almut's faithful sous chef; Tobias has none and in fact behaves with such inhuman forbearance that a viewer finally realizes the movie isn't about him or, indeed, the couple.
Instead, "We Live in Time" turns out to be a movie about a woman choosing between her family and her career with an oncological gun pointed at her head. Almut learns she has been tapped to represent England in the prestigious Bocuse d'Or gastronomic competition, which she embarks on while somehow keeping it secret from Tobias and their adorable, perfectly behaved little daughter Ella (Grace Delaney). Why the subterfuge? Aside from guilt, it's never clear, other than to gin up conflict in a story that seems resistant to it. In any event, Pugh uses her expressive eyes and ardent, intelligent sensibilities to paint a touching if underdeveloped portrait of an artist desperate to leave her mark before being rushed too soon from the show.
This all unfolds with a minimum of medical unpleasantness and a gently weepy score, heavy on the minor chords, by Bryce Dessner of the rock band the National. His music, tender and discreet and bloodless, is of a piece with the film. At the promotional screening I attended, packets of tissues were handed out to the audience of mostly young women with the implied promise that they would be sobbing. By the muted final scenes of "We Live in Time," that audience seemed sad, puzzled and largely un-verklempt at a movie whose message appeared to be "Love means never having to say you're dying."
R. At area theaters. Contains language, sexuality and nudity. 107 minutes.
Ty Burr is the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr's Watch List at tyburrswatchlist.com.
