Film Review

We Live in Time (2024) • London Film Festival — Pugh and Garfield sparkle in manipulative tearjerker

An up-and-coming chef and a newly divorced man find love in a decade-long romance.

Tobias Durand (Andrew Garfield), a Weetabix cereal marketing executive, is going through a divorce when, on his way to buy a pen to sign the papers, he’s hit by a car. When he wakes up in a hospital corridor, he meets the woman who hit him, the south London fine dining chef, Almut Bruhl (Florence Pugh).

Early on in We Live in Time, Almut is told her ovarian cancer has returned and it’s potentially terminal. Having already beaten it once, she has to choose between spending what could be her last few months going through chemotherapy and surgery or enjoying her time with her husband and young daughter.

We Live in Time would have been more emotionally impactful if told chronologically. There is little to no emotional impact because the film spends almost two hours emotionally preparing audiences for the ending. Screenwriter Nick Payne wants to depict life as it’s remembered, not how…