We Live in Time is a well-acted and heartfelt portrayal of a marriage which largely left me cold.

On paper, this movie had all the components of something great, with an excellent director in John Crowley (Brooklyn) and two of the best actors around in Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

It is the kind of movie most regular cinemagoers want to see made, with big name stars carrying quality material in a good old-fashioned drama made for adult audiences.

But for whatever reason, I could never connect with the central couple whose genuine struggles felt more like plot points than real strife.

There is nothing objectively bad in We Live in Time, but it is the kind of movie that will leave your mind the moment you leave the theatre.

It follows Almut Brühl (Pugh), a chef diagnosed with cancer and Tobias Durand (Garfield), a middle manager at a cereal company who is recently divorced. The audience is shown their love story in a non-linear fashion, with scenes jumping between the characters’ younger days before they met and later in their relationship, seemingly at random.

Perhaps it is this jumbling which gets in the way of creating genuine emotion. Although I never felt confused at the changes themselves, I was confused by the need for an out-of-order story in the first place.

Where a movie like Memento uses the time cutting as a way to support its message, We Live in Time seems to use it as a crutch to try and spice up an otherwise ‘just okay’ movie.

The movie is somewhat saved by the genuine chemistry of Pugh and Garfield and their tender moments together are mostly well played. It is beautifully shot and looks great too.

But as a melodramatic weeper, it never quite manipulates the audience in the right way and I remained stone faced throughout.

Rated 16 for Language, Nudity and Sex.

2.5/5.

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