We live in time: A review.
There’s a certain magic in the ordinary. The way life can shift on its axis with the most unremarkable of actions. Buying a pen, for instance, could become the pivot point of your life. That’s how We Live in Time, directed by John Crowley, begins—small, insignificant actions building into something grander, something more meaningful, until you realize that nothing is ever truly small. Every choice, every moment ripples outward.
Tobias is a man on the verge of collapse, and you feel it in the way he moves through his world—detached, almost resigned. He’s buying a pen to sign his divorce papers when fate quite literally knocks him off his path. Almut, the woman behind the wheel, enters his life as a stranger, but what strikes me is how quickly strangers can become essential. What begins as an accident unfolds into something so delicate, so unexpected, you almost miss it—love, creeping in through the cracks of their broken lives.
There’s a quiet desperation in both of them. Tobias, freshly separated, doesn’t tell Almut about his divorce the first time they meet. He holds onto that secret like a shield, perhaps hoping it might protect him from feeling too much too soon. And yet, as the film reveals, the truth has a way of slipping through. He returns to her restaurant, this time alone, and their connection deepens, but it’s fragile. Like so much of life, their love feels tenuous, always on the verge of slipping away. You can sense it in the spaces between their words, in the hesitations. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t come roaring into your life, but instead seeps in slowly, like a quiet rain.
Their relationship builds in these quiet moments—Tobias’s desire for permanence, for something solid to hold onto, and Almut’s fear of being tethered to anyone or anything. They collide, their differences laying bare the tension between wanting to be loved and the fear of what that love might demand. When Tobias confesses that he’s falling in love and wants to start a family with her, Almut’s rejection is so sharp, so sudden, it feels like a slap. The pain of that moment lingers long after the scene ends.
I found myself holding my breath, waiting for the next unraveling. We Live in Time doesn’t shy away from the messiness of love—the way it twists us, reshapes us, and sometimes leaves us raw. When Almut is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the film turns toward something even more fragile than love: life itself. Her body becomes a battlefield, and suddenly, time is no longer an abstract idea, but a ticking clock. Watching her wrestle with the choice of treatment or letting go, of whether to fight or surrender, is both heartbreaking and deeply human. I couldn’t help but think about how we all make these choices in different ways, how we hold on when we should let go and let go when we should hold on.
Tobias’s love grows more complicated here. He wants to save her, but what does saving someone even mean? It’s in this space of uncertainty that their love becomes something deeper. Tobias doesn’t just want her to live—he wants her to live fully, to be who she is, even if that means accepting the things he can’t control. And Almut, fiercely independent, wants her daughter to remember her as more than a patient in a hospital bed. It’s that desire to be remembered as alive—not just someone who was sick—that resonates so deeply. There’s something haunting in that, in the way we want to leave behind a legacy of life, not of suffering.
By the time Almut chooses to compete in the Bocuse d'Or, I understood why. She wasn’t choosing the competition over her family, over her life—she was choosing to be remembered for something other than her illness. She wanted to be remembered for her talent, her passion, for the fire that still burned inside her. Tobias’s frustration, his anger at her decision, felt so human. We want the people we love to choose us, to make us the center of their world, but love doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes, loving someone means letting them pursue their own path, even if it takes them away from you.
The film’s final act is devastating in its simplicity. The Bocuse d'Or competition, the skating rink, and then, quietly, the chickens back home. Tobias and their daughter, Ella, go about their day, but Almut’s presence is felt in every small gesture. Her absence looms, not in a dramatic way, but in the way life moves forward even when the people we love are no longer there to move with us. The scene where Tobias teaches Ella to crack an egg is one of the most poignant moments I’ve ever seen on screen. It’s such a simple thing, cracking an egg, but it carries the weight of everything Almut left behind—the small pieces of herself that live on in the people she loved.
We Live in Time is not a film about grand gestures or sweeping love stories. It’s about the quiet moments, the ones we often overlook. It’s about the way love creeps into our lives when we least expect it, and how, even in the face of loss, love doesn’t really go away. It lingers in the small things, the everyday rituals, the memories that resurface when you’re not looking for them. And maybe that’s the greatest legacy of all—not the moments that make headlines, but the ones that shape us in ways we can’t even begin to understand.
