The film “We Live in Time” could not move my cold, cold heart

Andrew Garfield is incapable of making a blank expression on his face. When he stares – whether at a person, a door, or an empty bedroom – waves of fear and hesitation break across his face. This trait can be a bit much at times, but it mostly works to his advantage in John Crowley's tear-jerking, timeline-spanning romantic drama We live in timea chronicle of the eventful, years-long relationship between Weetabix salesman Tobias (Garfield) and celebrated chef Almut (Florence Pugh). The film jumps back and forth between scenes from the couple's life together – their ridiculous meet-cute, their passionate sex sessions, their pregnancy, their drawn-out battle with Almut's cancer. (This isn't a spoiler: the film tells the story out of order, basically starting with the pregnancy before switching to the cancer diagnosis.) The scenes often begin with Tobias waking up and/or walking around with an uncertain expression on his face before we find out exactly what point in the relationship we are at. Sometimes it feels like he doesn't know either – like we're watching a man wandering through the chambers of his grief.

This impression could also be a reaction to how curated and sterile so many of the moments in We live in time feel. The film's constant jumps back and forth in the plot are presumably intended to convey the idea that time never seems to be enough, that these people are doomed by the unexpected brevity of their lives together. (Of course, the jumps also help to disguise the fact that the film doesn't tell much; it's basically Love story (without class consciousness and with a bizarre, top-notch international cooking competition thrown in for good measure.) Every moment of Tobias and Almut's lives feels important; every exchange feels capitalized; every scene tells us exactly how to feel. We understand that these two people loved each other very much; even their occasional relationship squabbles seem rooted in the fact that they love each other so, so much. But spending time together is also wasting time, and we rarely see anyone comfortable in this film. We rarely learn anything about these people.

The actors are, thankfully, a joy to watch. Pugh is a spark of desires and dreams, and she brings a plucky restlessness to Almut that helps sell some of the script's later, odder choices. The excitement of the activity she carries with her provides an interesting contrast to Garfield's saddened viewership of this romantic tragedy. Does this lead to anything resembling chemistry? I've seen the on-screen relationship in We live in timepartly because I kept feeling like the film was trying too hard. The love story is cheesy and the tragedy even cheesier. In a film that supposedly contains so much suffering, you long for something raw and real. But the best the film can produce is an extended, slapstick birth scene in a gas station that feels more like an R-rated take on an old Hugh Grant romantic comedy.

Director Crowley is no newcomer to romantic drama: He was nominated for best film in 2015 Brooklynwhich also takes a seemingly familiar premise but breathes new life into it. There, his cultivated classicism worked wonders. Here, he's working from a script by acclaimed British playwright Nick Payne that sometimes feels like it might work better on stage – where the cramped atmosphere and sparse sets might justify the significance of each scene, and where the film's unique structure, coupled with the immediacy of live theatre, might seem a little more daring. At the same time, it's hard to argue against tragedy on screen: if it breaks you, it breaks you, and there was a lot of sobbing at the end of my packed screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. My cold, cold heart, alas, remained unmoved.