Film Review - We Live in Time (2025)

We Live in Time stars Florence Pugh as Atmul, a chef who accidentally runs over Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and the two fall in love and have a child together but just as Atmul’s life begins to come together she is diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer and it puts a great strain on her relationship with Tobias and her dreams and goals for the future.

Florence Pugh is easily the best thing about this movie and she delivers another great performance as a young woman trying to find her way in the world only to be hit with the worst possible news, though some of the characters decisions are questionable at times while watching the film you can see where her character is coming from and Pugh sells all of these choices very well.

The rest of the film around her however doesn’t have the emotional resonance it should have, the story of a young person feeling the wind of life flowing in their veins and wanting to make their mark on the world by doing what they love only to be told they have cancer and their time left is potentially limited should be a powerful and moving story but instead for so much of the film I felt cold and distant from it.

And the main reason for this is the use of a non linear narrative, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan can do this structure and make it work very well but here John Crowley who made Brooklyn in 2015 cannot and because of that the emotional resonance which he delivered so well in Brooklyn feels missing here and it is really disappointing.

Also Andrew Garfield feels a little miscast here, now he is a good actor for sure but here he talks very softly a lot of the time and his chemistry with Pugh is hit and miss at times, a better choice would’ve been Taron Egerton who is similar to Pugh in age and would’ve delivered the emotional beats better than Garfield does here.

And so that was We Live in Time and this overall did very little for me, Pugh is great but the film she’s in isn’t and given the potential of this story and Crowley’s work on Brooklyn it feels all the more disappointing but as they say in the classics you win some, you lose some, 1.5 out of 5.