I didn't laugh as much as I thought I would during the first movie in my double feature at the Broadway last night but I definitely thought I would be able to have a good cry during the second, We Live in Time. Unfortunately, this left me feeling a bit flat. Chef Almut Bruhl (Florence Pugh) and the recently divorced Tobias Durand (Andrew Garfield) meet each other in an unconventional manner, fall in love, and then receive a devastating diagnosis that makes them reevaluate how they want to spend their time together. This features a nonlinear narrative that jumps back and forth between the early days of their relationship, a cancer diagnosis that Almut is able to beat, their struggle to get pregnant and the eventual birth of their child, and the aftermath of hearing that Almut's cancer has returned several years later. I'm not sure how I feel about the nonlinear timeline because it does feel like the two of them are looking back at memories as a way to celebrate their life together but I also feel like this structure takes away from the dramatic tension because we already know the outcome of several key moments before they happen. It seems like a gimmick to make a fairly conventional story more compelling. Pugh and Garfield have tremendous chemistry together and their performances do a lot to elevate the material but I didn't have an emotional connection to the characters because they are not developed fully (one character is an enigma and the other one has several baffling inconsistencies). As a fan of both Pugh and Garfield, I wanted to like this more than I did but I seem to be in the minority on this one so I suggest seeing it for yourself.
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