General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

We Live in Time

We Live in Time is a 2024 romantic drama directed by John Crowley, written by Nick Payne, and starring Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh as Tobias and Almut, a London couple whose decade-spanning relationship is told out of chronological order and shadowed by Almut's recurring ovarian cancer.¹^•² A British-French co-production from SunnyMarch and StudioCanal with Film4 and Shoebox Films, it premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in the United States by A24.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	John Crowley (Brooklyn); screenplay by playwright Nick Payne¹
Cast	Andrew Garfield as Tobias, Florence Pugh as Almut; supporting cast includes Grace Delaney, Aoife Hinds, and Adam James⁵
Runtime / rating	108 minutes; rated R for language, sexuality and nudity⁶^•⁷
Structure	Three cross-edited periods: a span of several years, a period of about six months, and a single day, the day the couple's child is born⁸
Premiere and release	World premiere at TIFF 2024; US limited release October 11, 2024, wide October 18, 2024 (A24); UK release January 1, 2025⁴^•⁶
Box office	$24,692,924 domestic and $33,968,192 international, for a worldwide total of $58,661,116⁹
Critical scores	Metascore 59 (mixed or average, 47 reviews); Rotten Tomatoes 79% Tomatometer from 229 reviews and 83% audience score¹⁰^•¹¹

Spoilers

Story and structure

Almut is an up-and-coming chef, formerly a competitive figure skater, and Tobias is a recently divorced man working in data for Weetabix. They meet when Almut hits Tobias with her car as he wanders out for pens during his divorce signing, and their first conversation takes place in a hospital hallway.²^•⁷ The film follows them through falling in love, disagreeing about children, building a home, having a daughter, and confronting the return of Almut's cancer, disclosed at Stage 3 in the film's very first sequence.²^•¹²

The narrative is deliberately non-linear. According to the production notes, three periods run against each other throughout: one spanning several years, one of about six months, and one single day, the birth of the couple's child.⁸ Unlike the terminal-illness romances it is often compared with, such as Love Story, the film does not show Almut's death on screen.¹³

Production

SunnyMarch originally commissioned Nick Payne to adapt a book it had in development with StudioCanal; instead, Payne proposed this original story, and the company backed it.¹⁴ Crowley, whose Brooklyn was nominated for Academy Awards, had directed Garfield before, in the 2007 drama Boy A, and cast him first; he has said the petrol-station birth scene was what made him want to make the film.¹⁵^•¹⁶ Garfield had personal experience of grief, having lost his mother to cancer in 2019.¹⁵

The producers were Adam Ackland, Leah Clarke, and Guy Heeley, with Benedict Cumberbatch among the executive producers. Stuart Bentley was the director of photography, Justine Wright the editor, and Bryce Dessner the composer.³

Release and box office

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024 and had its international premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.⁴ A24 released it in the United States on October 11, 2024 in limited theaters, expanding wide on October 18; it opened on five screens with a $232,615 opening weekend and eventually reached a maximum of 2,964 theaters.⁶ The United Kingdom release followed on January 1, 2025, where it debuted at number 3 with £2.8 million and ran for nine chart weeks, totaling £8.7 million.¹⁷ Worldwide grosses reached $58,661,116, with the strongest international territories including the United Kingdom ($11.8 million), Mexico ($5.05 million), and Australia ($4.48 million).⁹ A streaming release followed on November 22, 2024.¹¹

Critical reception

Reception divided over the structure while converging on the leads. On Metacritic the film scored 59, with 25 positive, 18 mixed, and 4 negative reviews out of 47; Rotten Tomatoes recorded 79% from 229 critics, with a critics consensus crediting the leads' chemistry in a melodrama that uses its nonlinear structure to explore grief.¹⁰^•¹¹

Praise for the leads. Reviewers across the spectrum credited Garfield and Pugh's chemistry with carrying scenes that might otherwise tip into cliché. The Hollywood Reporter praised their "achingly palpable, playful chemistry"; TheWrap called them enormously charming actors skilled at undercutting their own charm; and Time Out gave four stars to an "honest London romance" in which the time-hopping structure lets viewers consider the relationship in its totality.¹⁰^•¹⁸ Pugh drew particular notice for playing a woman who stays ambitious while facing her own mortality.¹⁸

Criticism. The non-linear structure was the main dividing line: admirers said it let the relationship be seen whole, while detractors, including Variety and Slant Magazine, called it contrived and gimmicky, a way of disguising a conventional terminal-illness weepie.¹⁸ Sight and Sound found the film eminently watchable but contrived, never grounded in real life, while faulting Bryce Dessner's "overtly manipulative" score.² The Guardian objected to product placement and a bland score, and The i Paper found the film's conclusions regressive; The Telegraph, nearly alone, judged that the leads lacked chemistry.¹⁸ Festival notices were markedly warmer than the later British reviews.¹⁸

Awards

The film received one win and four nominations. The Women Film Critics Circle awarded Garfield and Pugh Best Screen Couple, and the Irish Film and Television Awards nominated John Crowley for Best Director and Florence Pugh for Best International Actress; it was also nominated for a Guild of Music Supervisors trailer award and a Casting Directors' Guild award for Fiona Weir's casting.¹⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2024 › Titles M to Y

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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