After directing the 2015 film Brooklyn and the BBC series life after life, director John Crowley Didn’t want to do something “barely sentimental” for a while. But when he got the hand Nick PayneA script for a romantic drama We live in a time, He knew he couldn’t resist.
The story is about two relatively ordinary people living in London: an aspiring chef named Almut and a Weetabix employee named Tobias. They meet by accident—literally, Almut hits Tobias with his car—and end up falling in love and starting a family together. The story is made extraordinary by the way it is told: it captures the whimsical, sweet magic of falling in love, then explores what happens when that love story is cut short.
Crowley was drawn in by the way the film unfolded. Instead of telling the story chronologically, We live in time—which will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on September 6 and will be released in cinemas by A24 on October 11—will weave together several different time periods, jumping around the couple’s relationship. “The number of aspects of that relationship—the good, the bad, and the melancholy—almost struck me as a Cubist painting,” says Crowley. “It was more like looking at something from a lot of perspectives at once rather than being a great, big sweeping narrative.”
But as fantastic as the film looks, all the little building blocks of Almut and Tobias’ relationship come together over time makes the film feel so compelling. The magic act of tone, We live in time Funny, sweet, sad—and yes, nakedly emotional. But a romantic drama like this only works when its central actors have a chemistry that sparks so brightly you can almost feel the heat. Lucky for us, Andrew Garfield And Florence Pugh His full talent is on display in the film, giving an extremely charming and sensitive performance. As they fall in love on screen, you can’t help but do the same.
Pugh was actually thinking of some of those classic, charming romance movies—like Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, About Time, And really love– When she read the script for the first time We live in time. Like Crowley, she could not resist the project. “Especially as Brits, we grow up with the strangest and most beautiful love stories. And I think it’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those,” she says. “When I read it, I fell in love with the idea of being in one of those movies that’s important to so many people, and a long time. will live up to And it’s about the simplest things, which is that we are here, I personally believe, for one reason only: to love and be loved.”
Crowley and Garfield have wanted to work together since they made the British drama in 2007. boy a Garfield’s film debut. But unlike that dark story, Garfield played a young man re-entering society after serving a 14-year sentence in a juvenile prison. We live in time would allow Garfield to show off his comedic abilities along with his dramatic chops. “He’s very funny, and to be able to show both sides of his gift in one piece—the extreme sentimentality and his physical comedy—was too much to resist,” Crowley says.
When Crowley approached Garfield about the script, the actor was on vacation and hadn’t worked in nearly a year. Because he was in such a reflective place himself, the script felt like exactly what he was looking for. Also, it was a stark contrast to his most recent work playing aspiring creative genius Jonathan Larson in the musical. Tick, tick…boom! “Of course, with the same themes of the ticking clock and the growing awareness of sanctity and the brevity of our lives, but it was through a very different lens,” says Garfield. “And it was very interesting for me on a performance-challenge level like, OK, how can I play someone who reads so ordinary and is comfortable in his ordinariness, who is so obsessed with being extraordinary and talented? playing the role of such a person?”
After signing Garfield, the next challenge was finding his costar. Crowley immediately thought of Pugh. “I’ve never met her, but I’ve been a huge fan of her work, and have been very impressed by her ability to convey a degree of strength and tenacity,” he says. “I thought if she could take that and move toward the vulnerability that was necessary towards the end of the story, it could be really rich and interesting.”
But for a while, it looked like Pugh wouldn’t be available because she had to shoot a Marvel movie Thunderbolts. Then, by some miracle, the schedule changed, and she had a small window of time open up. His agent gave him the script. “I think for a long time, I wanted to find something that wasn’t as hard or as powerful as my other characters,” says Pugh, who is known for her work. Midsomer, Little Women, Oppenheimer, And Dune: Part Two. “I think this has come at the right time in my life. I got to play a very ordinary woman who is talented in her own right. The story is about a powerful love and a powerful connection between two people.
Garfield and Pugh have never collaborated before, but they did present an award together at the Oscars in 2023— Internet fire With their instant chemistry. Crowley first noticed the spark between the two actors during their week of rehearsals. “There were moments in the scenes, just throwaway moments, where you see their brilliance and brilliance. I’ll go, ‘Put it away. Let’s not do it again until the cameras roll,’” he says. “[It’s like] Watching two phenomenal tennis players on center court at Wimbledon, and all of a sudden one of them can’t hit the ball really hard, and the other one hits it behind.”
Although the actors showed mutual respect, they knew that the film would depend entirely on their chemistry. “It was scary because it was like, well, we don’t know each other, and these are high stakes because…we have to find a way to express the depth of universal love and loss together,” says Garfield.
But soon, it became clear that the chemistry was working. The pair soon fell into a rhythm that felt comfortable enough to dig into the movie’s deeper emotional work. “I felt like I had grown up a lot,” says Pugh. “I felt like I was coming at it in a different way, and I had someone who could hold me and protect me the same way I was holding and protecting Andrew. And it was a very fluid language between the two of us, and it was a very powerful thing to create with someone.”
Although there are plenty of moments in the film, the project is heavily emotional after Almut is diagnosed with cancer and begins treatment. Pugh shaved his head for the film, which caught the attention of fans and the media Walked the Met Gala carpet With its new look. “I think there was this weird rumor on the internet that I did it to reclaim my identity, which I’ve never said in my entire life,” she says. During her initial conversation with Crowley, he told her that they could look into wigs or other options that are shorter than shaving a full head. “I stopped him mid-sentence and I was like, ‘John, no one can play a character like this in a movie like this and not do what needs to be done,'” she says. “And if you don’t want to do it, So I guess you shouldn’t do such a story.”
Stories of cancer and grief are especially close to Garfield, whose mother died of pancreatic cancer in 2019. But he was not afraid of making the story so close to home. Instead, Garfield illustrates his approach by quoting a line from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”: “Tell me about despair, yours, and I’ll tell you mine.” We live in time Allowing him to explore his own suffering, and help others do the same. “There is a dialogue in the sense of loss, in the shared experience of loss and love, and the cost of loving and being fully alive,” he says. “So I hope we can all bond with courage to do that.”
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