I wanted to like “We Live in Time” (2024) so much more than I did. It lost me, however, once it was clear Almut was the villain.
Almut hits Tobias with her car; Almut pushes Tobias away when he brings up having a child; Almut “selfishly“ wants to die while living rather than petter out weak from chemo; when given the chance to come clean with Tobias about her cooking competition, Almut conceals her true desires and the fact she is training for it. Almut even has a pattern of not revealing the complete truth to Tobias because she never shared her first career, figure skating, with him. Tobias is portrayed as a pristinely vulnerable saint — before pursuing Almut, as a recently dumped divorcee, he gets his neck shaved by his widowed father. Our widower, Tobias, is heir to widowhood yet infantilized in a single scene.
Almut is a woman who sacrifices her own health to have a child with Tobias and when she puts her personal ambition ahead of her responsibilities as a mother (and ahead of her own survival) the film judges her as making the obviously wrong choice. It’s so obviously wrong that Almut herself walks away from her ambition mid-competition.
The first third of the film felt fresh. The performances by Garfield and Pugh were intimate and authentic. I even appreciated the nonlinear storytelling. But once Almut emerged as the baddie, none of the film’s merits could save it from its misogynistic mischaracterization of the female lead.
— November 29, 2024
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