We Live in Time (Movie)

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    Inside the Birthing Scene in ‘We Live in Time’

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    The stars and director of “We Live in Time” explain how a delivery became an action sequence, complete with a real baby and a few unwelcome surprises.You wouldn’t expect the romantic drama “We Live in Time” to have an action scene, but it does — at least that’s how Andrew Garfield sees it.In the middle of the time-hopping story of a young couple battling a cancer diagnosis, there’s a hilarious yet touching sequence when Almut, played by Florence Pugh, gives birth on all fours in a gas station bathroom as her partner, Tobias (Garfield), nervously coaches her through the delivery with the aid of two shockingly helpful employees.“It’s the big action event,” Garfield said. “It’s the Indiana Jones sequence.’”The birth scene is a showcase for both the acting skills of Pugh and Garfield and the unique tone of the film, which mashes up humor and tragedy. It was also a logistical challenge for the director John Crowley and the actors who had to deal with the intensity of the material as well as an actual weeks-old baby who arrived for the grand finale.For Crowley the birth was the reason he wanted to make the movie in the first place. A number of elements potentially swirling around each other meant “we could create a scene that was thrilling and refusing to be one thing at one time,” he said in a video interview, noting that the “absurdity of the situation” lives alongside the “genuine sort of jeopardy of it.”The idea for Almut’s chaotic labor was inspired, in part, by the screenwriter Nick Payne’s own experience when his wife was giving birth to their first child. The hospital where she was supposed to deliver was extremely busy at the time, and the couple was told they might have to go to another facility in a different part of London.“I just spent a long time very nervously worrying about that,” he said in an interview. The trip to a Croydon hospital would take him by a gas station, and “I would drive past that thing and think, ‘This is where we’re going to end up.’ It was basically my own anxiety.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘We Live in Time’ Review: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s Weepie

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      Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield star in this weepie romance that tries to be modern by unfolding over three intersecting timelines.Time doesn’t stand still in “We Live in Time,” a shamelessly old-fashioned weepie about love and heartache; it jitters and jumps, restlessly shifting back and forth. Set in contemporary Britain, the story follows Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) over a half-decade or so as their relationship develops around familiar milestones. They fall into bed and then into love, move in together and have a child, all while celebrating triumphs and weathering tragedies. As the years pass, they grow older, naturally, but their story is somewhat more complicated than most only because it unfolds out of chronological order.It’s a clever conceit that suggests how we experience the passage of time and, in the more successful interludes, conveys how the past, present and future inform one another. Early on, Almut whips up some eggs before waking Tobias in a sun-drenched bedroom in their picture-perfect country home. In a following sequence — which turns out to be set years before — he jolts awake in their darkened London flat and checks on the heavily pregnant Almut. Each awakening is connected by the couple’s love and ministering tenderness; intentionally or not, the scenes also signal that this movie has a real thing for eggs, fertilized and not.Written by Nick Payne and directed by John Crowley, “We Live in Time” is set during three time periods — one lasts several years, another six months and the third about a day — that have been minced and mixed together. The transitions between the different times are blunt and, at first, they’re a touch disorienting because they don’t come with the usual prompts; there are no rapidly turning calendar pages or characters mistily announcing, “I remember ….” Instead, the filmmakers keep you grounded in the separate eras partly through Tobias and Almut’s changing hairstyles, as well as through the birth of their daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), who grows from a topic of discussion into a charming little kid.Even as the filmmakers shuffle the couple’s different epochs around in a nonlinear fashion, time demands its due, as it must. As Almut and Tobias settle in for the long haul, more than just their hair changes. Almut, who quickly proves the richer character, undergoes significant transformations, including professionally as she goes from cooking in a small restaurant to presiding over a large staff in her own Michelin-starred place. Fairly early on, she and Tobias also receive the grim news from a doctor that her ovarian cancer has returned. It’s a jolt; it is the first indication that she’s been ill, and it’s also clear that the bad news will keep on coming.For the most part, Pugh and Garfield are pleasantly watchable, and they fit together persuasively enough to convey their characters’ mutual attraction. That’s the case even if Almut is more convincingly fleshed out than Tobias, who, as the story continues, can seem like both an obstacle and an appendage to this complicated woman. Almut doesn’t just give birth and fall gravely ill — which is already a lot for any one character — she’s far more professionally engaged than Tobias, who’s as bland as his job (for a cereal company) sounds. It’s an underwritten, reactive role that, particularly as Almut’s health crisis worsens, finds Garfield too often leaning on his talent for flooding his big, beseeching eyes with tears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      6 Movie Trends from the Toronto International Film Festival

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      And other cultural predictions based on movies that played at the Toronto International Film Festival, including Pedro Almodóvar’s latest.After years of pandemic delays and Hollywood strikes, the Toronto International Film Festival, which concludes on Sunday, felt particularly alive this year. Unlike recent years, there was no surefire hit like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022) or “Oppenheimer” (2023) that premiered in the spring or summer, which added excitement and uncertainty going into awards season. Movies both big and small come to the Canadian city to launch Oscars campaigns, build audiences, announce major debuts and, in some cases, woo buyers that’ll release films over the coming months. But it’s also a great place to see how culture at large is shifting, at least as far as Hollywood is concerned. Here’s where we’re headed.1. We’re all in the mood for love again …Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in “We Live in Time.”Courtesy of TIFFIf the September film season (which also includes major festivals in Venice, Italy, Telluride, Colo., and the upcoming one in New York), has shown something, it’s that many writers and directors are feeling romantic. There’s Sean Baker’s “Anora,” about a sex worker who marries the son of an oligarch, and William Bridges’s “All of You,” which depicts Brett Goldstein (of “Ted Lasso” acclaim) and Imogen Poots as best friends who can’t decide whether to date. Chemistry always wins out, of course, and it’s hard to deny the frisson between Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in John Crowley’s “We Live in Time,” an indie crowd-pleaser that’s ideal for crying your way through on a rainy Sunday afternoon.2. … Or maybe it’s just lust.Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson in “Babygirl.”Courtesy of TIFFDaniel Craig and Drew Starkey in “Queer.”Yannis DrakoulidisToronto was brimming with romantic tragedies, not comedies; perhaps because of ongoing conversations about non-monogamy and open relationships, there were a lot of affairs onscreen, too. The most successful scripts focused on intense, almost unnamable desire, often between two people who know it can’t last: In Halina Reijn’s “Babygirl,” Nicole Kidman plays a powerful executive who gets into a complicated psychosexual mess with her intern; in Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” based on the William S. Burroughs novel (published in 1985), Daniel Craig’s heroin-addled character deals with the hot-and-cold affections of a paramour while traveling through midcentury Mexico City and South America. Both films sizzle, and it’s no coincidence that the actors playing the young objects of these leads’ affections — Harris Dickinson and Drew Starkey, respectively — are proving themselves to be rising talents.3. Another major star? Danielle Deadwyler.Danielle Deadwyler in “The Piano Lesson.”Courtesy of TIFFWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More