107 min | R | October 18, 2024 | A24
Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh fall in love across a decade told out of order. John Crowley makes a romantic drama that trusts its actors more than its structure.
Almut is a chef building a restaurant. Tobias is a recently divorced cereal company executive. They meet when she hits him with her car. The film tells their love story across a decade in non-chronological fragments. Early courtship overlaps with late-stage illness. A pregnancy announcement sits next to a cancer diagnosis. John Crowley and screenwriter Nick Payne use the fractured timeline to create emotional juxtapositions. A scene of joy becomes heavier because the audience knows what comes next. A scene of grief becomes lighter because the audience remembers what came before. The structure is the film’s thesis. Time is not a line. It is a collection of moments that coexist.
Florence Pugh plays Almut with the intensity she brings to everything. Almut is driven and competitive and terrified of being forgotten. Pugh makes the ambition feel inseparable from the mortality. When Almut pushes to compete in a cooking competition while undergoing treatment, Pugh plays it not as inspiration but as desperation. She is racing against time and the film knows it. Andrew Garfield plays Tobias with a gentleness that grounds the film. He is the person who stays. Who shows up. Who makes the sandwiches and holds the hands and absorbs the anger. Garfield is doing quieter work than Pugh and it is equally essential. The chemistry between them is immediate and specific. They feel like a real couple in every timeline.
Crowley directed Brooklyn and knows how to build an emotional narrative across time. The cinematography by Stuart Bentley shifts warmth and tone across the different periods. The early relationship scenes are bright and warm. The illness scenes are cooler and more contained. The production design tracks Almut’s career through her restaurant spaces. The kitchen sequences are shot with the precision and chaos of an actual professional kitchen. The editing by Justine Wright carries the weight of the non-linear structure. The transitions between timelines are clean and purposeful. The score by Bryce Dessner supports without overwhelming.
The non-linear structure is both the film’s greatest asset and its limitation. It protects the audience from the full weight of the illness narrative by constantly cutting to happier times. That can feel like emotional manipulation or emotional mercy depending on your tolerance for the device. The film is conventional in its bones. Two beautiful people love each other and one of them gets sick. The performances and the structural ambition elevate it above the standard romantic drama. Pugh and Garfield make the love feel earned and the loss feel real.