‘We Live In Time’ Thinks It’s A More Interesting Film Than It Actually Is

Not even the star power of Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh can save this film.

It’s a tale as old as time: Two people meet, fall in love, and build a life together, warts and all.

It’s also a tale as old as time that how someone chooses to tell a story matters, sometimes just as much as what the story is.

The central conceit of “We Live in Time” is that the romance between its central characters, Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and Almut (Florence Pugh), is told nonlinearly. We get dropped into various periods of their relationship, like flipping through a stack of assorted snapshots of their lives.

If only that intricate and itinerant structure made a difference in the emotional experience of the film. Using a novel storytelling approach in an otherwise conventional relationship drama only works if it adds something to the story. That creative decision has to mean something, especially when the whole film, directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Payne, is predicated on that choice.

But in “We Live in Time,” an otherwise interesting storytelling choice ends up being a colossal waste of time. All of this — for what?