The film throws us into Almut’s (Florence Pugh) future, where she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer for a second time. We see she is married to Tobias (Andrew Garfield), and there is mention of their child, Ella. The film flicks between past and future, quite assertively, with the only telling factor being Almut’s changing hair.
The motif of time shrieks throughout; it seems less important to Almut, but all-consuming for Tobias. Tobias is a keeper of time; he attaches himself to it quite literally with a stopwatch around his neck or a timer on his phone. Time unites - as we see in the fairground scene after they have learned she is in remission, they finally have time to spend. As they become childlike again, it calls to the inner child in all of us, to the sheer premise of falling in love with each part of someone, each version of them, past and present, connecting with the same versions of you.
The film is a beautiful depiction of the way that grief carries on, and the things we carry forward from the people we’ve lost
However, time is limited. Faced with the decision of removing her ovaries altogether, Pugh gives a careful demonstration of the constant questions that women are eventually forced to ask themselves. Almut’s cancer forces her to decide promptly whether she will change her mind about children, now that the choice might be taken away. Her lack of focus on time becomes intertwined with her lack of want to plan for children, she is forced to deal with the overlooked. It is an uncomfortable feeling that lives inside all of us, something that we subconsciously choose not to deal with, until our time begins to run out.
After their first night together, Tobias suggests that it’s time for him to go, and Almut disrupts this with a simple “Why, who says?”. She doesn’t acknowledge, associate with or obsess over time. She reserves this for her own focus: food. Tobias first tries her food at her restaurant. The scene is quiet but telling -his expression shows a sense of discovery, something he had never considered before. They bond through food in the deli scene, through the cracking of eggs and eggs on toast. Food is a connector for Almut, even in death it carries through to the very end, as Tobias and their daughter, Ella, crack eggs the same way she had taught Tobias to.
The film is a beautiful depiction of the way that grief carries on, and the things we carry forward from the people we’ve lost. We Live in Time shows the complexity of grief -the denial, the memory, even dry comedy. Pugh gives an impeccable representation of the reality of terminal illness, not the time it takes away but the necessity to live in the time we have left. Almut's ending is soft, but heart-wrenching. It preserves not her motherhood, but each version of her person. Skating away from Tobias and Ella, Almut stops to wave goodbye, before finally fading out of frame.