Image via Unsplash by Katie Smith
By: Kiera Garcia – Associate Culture Editor
Spoilers Ahead
Back in October, I had the opportunity to see an advanced screening of We Live In Time at
the London Film Festival and since then I have been unable to stop telling people to see it.
We Live In Time follows the lives of Almut and Tobias, two 30-something year-old
Londoners, as they navigate the ups and downs of their relationships together, specifically as
Almut is diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. The story is told non-chronologically, jumping
between the early stages of their relationship and what could be considered the present day,
where Almut is struggling between her diagnosis and wanting to still do things that matter to
her in the time she has left.
The film gives you the feeling that you have been dropped into life beside them as they
navigate the challenges that come along in ordinary life. It is not a story of wondrous
adventure or high stakes action, but one of understanding and appreciation for the human
condition and the want to be remembered. One of the ways that it does this is by allowing the
film to be funny and playful, while still acknowledging the difficulties that come with a
diagnosis. Much of the film is not about Almut’s diagnosis and instead about the memories
that carry forward, such as their first date, the birth of their daughter, and their everyday life
in London.
The scene that has stuck in my mind since the first time I saw this film is when Almut forgets
to pick up their daughter from nursery school. She has been busy training for the Bocuse
d’Or, an international cooking competition, something she has been hiding from both Tobias
and her doctors. Tobias gets angry at her knowing that her participation and the stress that
comes with this contest could be the deciding factor in her survival. It is here that Almut
delivers a beautiful, but frustrated monologue filled with grief for the little time she has left
and the way she wishes to be remembered when she is gone. She says that she does not just
want to be remembered as someone’s dead mum. She wants to be remembered for her
accomplishments and her passions, not for wasting away in hospital.
The film also abides by Almut’s wishes as it does not show the viewer the end of her life nor
does it focus on her sickness as the defining factor around her. There is no scene in a hospital
bed and there is no funeral shown. Almut participates in the Bocuse d’Or, gaining some sort
of peace once she is finished. Although it isn’t explicitly stated in the film, this is likely one
of the last days of Almut’s life, and she has managed to accomplish the one thing she felt she
needed to do before she passes away. The film refuses to pigeonhole Almut as a patient or
someone who is suffering, instead focusing on all of the fantastic years of her life she had
with Tobias and the memory of her that carries on.
It goes to show that, yes, the large accomplishments of a person’s life are remembered but it
is the small things that endure beyond them. Towards the beginning of the film Almut shows
Tobias ‘the best way to crack an egg’, a scene that is then replicated at the end of the film
with Tobias and Ella after Almut has passed. She is remembered for her accomplishments as
she wished to be, but she is also remembered through the everyday things that persist within
in her family’s life.
The movie deals with death as something that is not some large, unnameable thing, but an
eventual experience we will all go through. Not an end, but a step in life, for as long as
memories live on those who are no longer with us will too.