I went into We Live in Time expecting a romance. And while the latest film of Brooklyn director John Crowley is a romance, the story of Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) is as much about how a single moment in your life can feel like it lasts forever and ends in the blink of an eye. The silent, powerful film made me wonder: What does it mean that time marches forward and often leaves us behind? We Live in Time unfolds in a series of scenes shown in chronological order, reminding us that even the worst moments must pass.

We are introduced to Almut (a chef who specializes in modern European cuisine) and Tobias (a man who sells the most sensible British breakfast products, Weetabix) as their relationship has been going on for several years. The ambitious Almut and the sensible Tobias work together so harmoniously that it is an amusing shock when we later learn that they met after she accidentally ran him over with her car. The stars have an instant chemistry. Pugh and Garfield embody these lovers with passion and playfulness, rooted in the realities of everyday life and everyday conversations. There’s no melodrama here: instead, We Live in Time drapes the simple joys and simple tragedies of a couple over us like a weighted blanket. Their love story is not the sweeping, dramatic romance of Titanic or The Notebook – its power lies in its silence. A relationship is more than grand gestures and it is in fact the practical choices Almut and Tobias make together about the future that show the strength of their bond.

A surprising highlight for me: the use of nudity in the film. Pugh and Garfield talked about filming a certain sex scene in We Live in Time – just the two of them on set with director of photography Stuart Bentley. Sex in this film is not intended to be lustful or lurid; What makes these moments between Almut and Tobias passionate is their fervent desire for each other, the giddiness of their lovemaking in both the past and present. Intimacy is vulnerability, and Bentley captured that beautifully. The body here is a subject and not an object. In a beautiful scene, Tobias and a heavily pregnant Almut share a bath together with an ease that shows us a couple who are both emotionally and physically comfortable being naked with each other.

Despite the new presentation, this is a relatively simple story. The components are known: couple meet, fall in love, have a child, endure a potentially fatal illness together. But these ordinary events take on an extra dimension because of the way We Live in Time mixes them up. One moment, Almut could be in her 40th week of pregnancy. In the following you may see one of the couple’s early dates.

There are no real visual indicators of when this happens – no title cards, no date lines on the screen – aside from changing hairstyles and the presence of their daughter, Ella (Grace Delaney). Yet this non-linear time progression worked so well for me. Life is made of moments, and they are the moments that we will be remembered by, but no one thinks about their memories in order. Almut’s central conflict lies in how she will be remembered. She behaves irrationally, sometimes even somewhat selfishly, as her cancer progresses. But We Live in Time isn’t interested in suing her for something that’s completely natural. Pugh gives a heartbreakingly serious performance as Almut who rages against the thought of death when there is still so much to achieve. She’s not a tragic figure by any means, and her refusal to be seen as such – and the steps she takes to ensure she doesn’t live on in Tobias and Ella’s memories this way – is powerful.

Almut and Tobias are a couple that I will remember for a long time. Pugh and Garfield are a force together, playing these characters with such care that I never doubted their commitment to each other. We Live In Time is a beautiful reflection on memory and life, interested in the complexity of our approach to the passage of, yes, time. Our lives will last forever, our lives will be over soon: both can be true, and it’s nice to be reminded that the moments we live in can only be experienced once.

We live in the time gallery