We Live in Time could've carved out some hours to cultivate more personality

There are countless meet-cutes in the history of romantic drama cinema. However, few have rarely lived up to the word "smashing" like how We Live in Time protagonist Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh) met. The former character was walking out at night in a depressed stupor (the prospect of signing divorce papers sent him into a sour mood). That's when the latter lady accidentally hit him with her car. Cut to the next morning. Tobias awakens in the hospital with a neck brace and Almut sitting in front of him. She apologizes for injuring him and treats him to a lunch afterward. Unbeknownst to them, this is the first of many dates they'll go on.

Director John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Payne chronicle this love affair in a non-linear fashion. One minute, viewers are watching the two argue about whether or not they could ever have kids. Next, we're witnessing Tobias and Almut, now with a daughter named Ella (Grace Delaney), grappling with Almut's resurging ovarian cancer. Love is never easy, as this duo can attest. But hopping all across the timeline of Tobias and Almut’s connection does show that love also endures. Through the worst and best of times, this bond refuses to break.

We Live in Time is a perfectly amiable weepie, but it also feels weirdly aloof. There’s something about Payne’s writing of these people that makes it hard to get attached to them. Perhaps it’s the unspoken financial security Tobias and Almut have. No matter what extreme problems plague them, they always inhabit expansive farmyards or spacious apartments. A key problem, though, is how Tobias is written. Here is a man who functions as the complete opposite of schlubby endlessly flawed romantic movie dudes. If you wished on a monkey’s paw for a remedy to these characters, We Live in Time’s Tobias would pop up in your living room.

Tobias is what every Tumblr girly circa. 2013 would want in a man. He’s tall, British, carries sad puppy dog eyes, wields zero physical or psychological flaws whatsoever, and always says the kindest things in the softest voice. If you know what the phrase "Superwholock" is without resorting to Google, then you know exactly this archetype. For some viewers, Tobias will be a dream come true to see on the big screen. More power to them! For me, it was just hard to latch onto Tobias. He’s not just a dream man. He’s a man as tangible as a dream. Over nearly two hours, this individual remains frustratingly thinly defined even with a game Garfield performance. The qualities that make Tobias “accessible” also render him dramatically inert.

That’s a key problem when We Live in Time hinges so much on profound audience investment in every move he makes. Tobias also encapsulates a larger strange trend in this screenplay. There’s a weird lack of conflict or messiness between the We Live in Time characters. These fictional figures don’t really have personalities to speak of. Individuals like Tobias’s dad or Almut’s co-workers in her fancy kitchen are mostly vessels for wise axioms about love. There’s little to hold onto that suggests these people have rich interior lives. Genericness permeates so many of We Live in Time’s inhabitants that Almut’s brother has a briefly seen boyfriend who looks like his doppelganger. Even the gay men in this universe have a few separate idiosyncrasies!

The one big exception to this is Almut herself. She's afforded sightly messier traits than anyone else in the movie. If anything keeps We Live in Time afloat, it's the constantly captivating Pugh lending tangible humanity to Almut's jagged sides. She's also the performer who most impresses with Time's non-linear structure. Watching Pugh subtly change her posture, hand gestures, or her speaking style from one scene to another is remarkable. Profound understanding of how human behavior evolves over time seeps into Pugh’s on-screen work.

Better yet, she also lends some gravity to emotional beats or lines that could’ve been hokey in shakier hands. Pugh also excels in We Live in Time’s best scene. This stretch of the narrative chronicles Almut and Tobias making a petrol station run that will change their lives forever. Pugh realizes Almut’s most frustrated and vulnerable moments here with a tender, not exploitative touch. She’s not the only reason this particular segment is deeply memorable. In a movie where even parking garages seem sparkling clean, there's an escalating level of chaos in this sequence that’s a breath of fresh air. Garfield’s performance also shines during all the disorderly mayhem. Juxtaposing his proper personality and delivery of lines like “my partners in the loo” against all this bedraggled bedlam is a hoot.

Speaking of Garfield, he and Pugh do share a solid rapport despite the writing letting We Live in Time’s leading man down. Still, they’re never quite compelling enough as a duo to distract from the greater problems plaguing the entire movie. This includes disappointing imagery that leaves so much potential on the table. Crucially, Crowley and cinematographer Stuart Bentley fail to find really visual reinforcements of the non-linear narrative. Similar color schemes and camerawork permeate each era of Tobias and Almut’s lives. It’s a trait compounding the lack of specificity to the various time periods our leads inhabit.

Eventually, the non-linear narrative element sputters out in Payne’s script. Much of We Live in Time’s third act runs in a standard chronological fashion. Failing to commit to this conceptually distinctive element encapsulates We Live in Time’s frustratingly banal nature. There are charming virtues nestled in here and you could do worse as a date night movie option. However, the latest John Crowley film is nowhere near as impactful as that car that totaled Tobias. It’s more like the in-movie presence of that viral carousel horse from the We Live in Time poster: fleeting and ultimately forgettable.