After the unmanageable catastrophe of The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt’s book was never going to generate a digestible film – John Crowley, who broke through with Brooklyn close to a decade ago, is back on solidish ground with this competent, if drippily insubstantial, romantic drama of the old school. We will say little more positive than that.
The closest model, if this does not count as a spoiler, is Arthur Hiller’s enormously successful, now largely derided, Love Story, from 1970. Andrew Garfield (always on hand when a director needs a character to splutter through barely suppressed tears) and Florence Pugh (who could liven up a scene even if playing a congenital narcoleptic) stand in for Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. That almost counts as an upgrade.
But, though the actors work hard at fleshing out their roles, they have, if anything, even thinner characters to deal with. Erich Segal’s source novel for Love Story at least bothered to inject a degree of ham-fisted social division. O’Neal was spoilt scion of a rich eastern family. MacGraw was what counted for working class in mainstream US cinema.
In contrast, the leads here seem to have emerged from the Richard Curtis Posho Factory with few concessions to England as it is lived in by the majority of its citizens. As the script tells us more often than is necessary, Tobias (Garfield) works as a top-end representative for Weetabix. Almut (Pugh) was a top figure skater but now works as a chef. Not any chef, mind. She does not put bacon between bread for the commuters at Waterloo Station. She is a Michelin-starred genius who, in the later stages, competes in a culinary variation on Eurovision that I haven’t bothered to check is a real thing or not.
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Too many in the media, where the definition of “romcom” has become clouded, have already described We Live in Time in those terms. One is tempted to point out that, structured around a developing tragedy, the thing could not, even at the greatest stretch, be described as a comedy. Yet Nick Payne’s screenplay dips its toe in so many of Curtis’s pools that one can almost forgive the error. Does this insufferable upper-middle-class world even exist without Notting Hill and Four Weddings and a Funeral? Did he invent it in the same way that Dickens invented Christmas?
It fast becomes clear that not all is as paradisiacal as Stuart Bentley’s crisp cinematography might suggest. Payne’s so-so script reveals grim tidings through a structure that zips backwards and forwards from sad aftermaths to merry beginnings to challenging middles. Almut and Tobias (honestly, those names) meet in the cutest fashion as chef runs over Weetabix magnate while he is wandering the streets in his bathrobe. They struggle to have a child. There is good news from the doctor. Then there most definitely is not.
We Live in Time is unquestionably a quality release. It looks beautiful. The music swirls evocatively. For all the facetiousness above, one must admit that it makes a sincere effort to contemplate mortality and, unlike Love Story, to detail the specific challenges of grave illness. Many will be won over by the emotional surge of the closing moments. Others will wonder if there is a word for a manipulative drama that fails to satisfactorily manipulate.
This a perfectly respectable genre. Last year’s TV adaptation of David Nicholls’s weepie One Day travelled similar roads in triumphant fashion. So what doesn’t quite land here? It’s too calculated, it’s too sweet, it’s too complacent. Most damaging of all, the two leads, for all their gifts, seem to be acting in different registers. An odd creature.
In cinemas Wednesday, from January 1st
