John Crowley's love story outside the series

One moment, award-winning chef Almut (Florence Pugh) wakes up her beloved Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and asks him to try her latest creation, the next it is the middle of the night and the now pregnant Almut is sitting on the toilet while he times her contractions.

Effective love stories are made up of big and small moments. In “We Live in Time,” John Crowley has created a version of the typical romantic comedy that should really be a greatest hits version. He presents all the key scenes from Almut and Tobias' relationship – getting to know each other's families, the marriage proposal, parenthood, divorce, cancer diagnoses, and so on – just not in that order.

It's a clumsy way to tell a story, but Crowley is convinced that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling that people will want to see his film again and again, and by then the memories of Almut and Tobias will have become our memories and the order will hardly matter. At least that's one take on a film by acclaimed playwright Nick Payne that seems far less ambitious and less high-concept than his slim but brilliant one-act “Constellations,” a multiverse love story written in 2012, before multiverses were all the rage.

By contrast, in We Live in Time there is only one reality—which is fine, since that's how most people experience life—but Crowley posits that the emotional high points probably have a stronger impact when presented in a more strategic order. Still fine, since virtually all storytellers arrange scenes to fit their narrative, though they rarely reshuffle them in such a haphazard way as here.

Minutes after the taste-testing-in-bed scene, for example, Tobias is back in the guest room of his father's house, trying to decide what to eat before work (as a lowly employee of the Weetabix team). It's confusing to say the least, although our brains have become amazingly sophisticated at rearranging unrelated stories. If you could follow “Everything, Everywhere at Once,” then “Sometimes, Some Things in No Particular Order” should be a piece of cake. But it isn't, as there is an art to crafting non-linear narratives (see “Forget Me Not!” or anything by Atom Egoyan), and this one makes the mistake of setting up certain events and then never coming back to them.

Strip away the sequencing trick and you're left with just another run-of-the-mill cancer drama. At the heart of this oddly straightforward A24 release is Almut's diagnosis: stage 3 ovarian cancer. We later learn that this case is a relapse of a previous course of the disease, which left Almut having to choose between having a single affected ovary or her entire uterus removed. But we already know what they decided, as the couple have a daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney), who we saw shaving her mother's head in the second round.

On the topic of timelines, it's worth noting that Crowley watched Andrew Garfield grow up. The director discovered the then-future Spider-Man star by first casting him as a juvenile delinquent in 2007's Boy A. That means We Live in Time marks a reunion: a more mature project for both of them, but also a more manipulative one, as Crowley recognizes Garfield's superpower – the watery eyes and quivering lips – and invokes them at every step of their relationship.

Rather than reveal where their decades-long love story takes them, we'll just look at their first contact, when Almut surprises Tobias with her car. It's certainly a memorable first spark, but by the time Crowley shows it, we're already in the hospital, so it's a little confusing to figure out which of the two is the patient (hint: it's the one with the neck brace). “Meet sweet. Die sweeter.” That could be the tagline for a movie determined to make every scene as endearing and/or adorable as possible.

Cancer is a terrible disease, and if we accept it as more than a remedy here, then “We Live in Time” might be a consolation. (Then again, the filmmakers seem so intent on eliciting an emotional response that a terminal illness might be a cynical page from Nicholas Sparks' script?) Many of the moments Crowley presents are touchstones in most people's lives: The birth scene is a real showstopper, and Tobias's marriage proposal – delivered timidly at the end of a hallway lined with candles and carrots – is one of Hugh Grant's classics.

This approach gives people who have had cancer a smitten romance to cling to, although this couple is experiencing such an idealized version of it that normal people might end up feeling like they're doing it wrong. What makes 'We Live in Time' different is that it takes the woman's concerns seriously. Tobias wants Almut to marry him and have children, but as an extremely competitive personality, she has other priorities. Pugh plays Almut, who is both vulnerable and independent, with the self-respect to see them through.

Right after Almut's second cancer diagnosis, she takes Tobias aside and poses a hypothesis: what if, instead of undergoing another round of treatment, they lived the coming months to the fullest? This hints at the logic that might lie behind the film's wacky chronology, as Tobias clings to memories (the flashbacks could well be his, told largely from his perspective) while Almut insists on savoring every remaining moment (her involvement in a cooking competition drives the plot forward).

Who doesn't love a gourmet cooking scene or two? They balance things out nicely, sandwiched between make-ups, break-ups and smooches. Several times Crowley demonstrates the best way to crack eggs (on a flat surface). If only there was a way to decode his film.