A time to love, a time to cry.

There’s a lot that goes into a successful love story, however, it’s impossible to overstate just how crucial your two stars are. Quite frankly, you can have all the clever meet cutes and heart-warming plots you want but if you’ve not got the required level of chemistry between your two leads, you’ve got nothing.

Whether it’s Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, or Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan (again) – a star pairing dripping with chemistry and charisma can elevate even the most generic of romantic tales. Get it wrong, however, and audiences are likely to fall out of love with your film quicker than you can say “it’s turkey time”.

For a film so evidently reliant on the chemistry of its stars to succeed, the pressure is therefore on for We Live in Time and its two leads to deliver. But boy, do Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield deliver.

Through snapshots of their life together – falling for each other, building a home, becoming a family – a difficult truth is revealed between Almut (Florence Pugh) and Tobias (Andrew Garfield) that will rock their relationship’s very foundation. As the couple embark on a path challenged by the very limits of time, they learn to cherish each moment of their unconventional love story while they still can.

While that damn yellow carousel horse went and stole so much of We Live in Time’s marketing limelight, what cannot be overlooked is just how much heavy lifting Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield did on the press tour by – well – just being themselves, really. Individually, both are among the most charismatic, affable actors in the game, so each one being a key selling point in the film’s marketing is not surprising; however, what is startling is just how incredibly they work as a duo.

With a clear bond as both actors and friends, the chemistry off-screen was patently obvious to anyone who saw the film’s press trail, yet the real magic between the two is what happens on screen. So much of We Live in Time’s fate falls squarely on the duo’s shoulders, however, if there were any fears as to whether they could handle the pressure, they’re instantly quashed with the pair a hit from the off.

The first and most important aspect of Pugh and Garfield’s onscreen love is just how natural and genuine it all feels. It’s believable and authentic in a way that so few on screen romantic pairings can be, and you absolutely feel it with every second of their screen time together.

Whether it’s the big conversations, their painfully intimate moments together, or just the bursts of simple, everyday banter that pepper Tobias and Almut’s relationship, everything about their time onscreen clicks. There’s a delicacy and an intimate honesty to their interactions that manages to open them up to us as an audience while allowing us to care for their relationship in a way that so few big screen love stories can.

Working with a relatively unshowy, low-key script, both Pugh and Garfield do fantastically well to punch everything up and squeeze it for as much emotion as possible as individuals, however, it’s together that the pair truly shine. With every scene working as a little self-contained pocket of memory, there’s little of We Live in Time where we don’t see them together, and with every second of their screen time, you can just feel the crackling electricity between the duo.

However, with the toughest – and most important – part of the job accomplished and the film’s two stars keeping up their end of the bargain, for We Live in Time to be considered a true success, it must nail its execution and the implementation of its premise. Which, for the most part, it does.

Bouncing back and forth in time on a whim, We Live in Time’s non-linear story could’ve easily felt like a cheap gimmick, however, while there are certainly moments where it appears a little forced, it otherwise clicks perfectly. It’s a fragmented narrative technique used by many films, many times before, with varying degrees of success, but here it works exceptionally well to turn what threatens to be a run-of-the-mill love story into something far more interesting and far more involving.

Bobbing and weaving through time, the narrative is deliberately evasive, purposely fractured, and fully intent on keeping us guessing until the very end. Like pockets of memory popping up and disappearing before you know it, the narrative and editing choices do a fantastic job of mimicking the fragmented way we remember our lives, all while gleefully playing with our expectations every step of the way.

As with many non-linear narratives, some of We Live in Time’s approach can feel a tad clunky, with plenty of narrative contrivances and overly-convenient plot points scattered along the way, however, as a piece, it’s all highly effective and extremely satisfying emotionally.

If your life does indeed flash before your eyes the split second you pass, such memories are unlikely to come in a linear format, and We Live in Time adopts this approach very well, hurling the key moments of a relationship at us all at once. Full of ups and downs, laughs and tears, fears and confusion, as well as pockets of joy that arrive at the most unexpected of times - John Crowley does a wonderful job presenting us with such a wholly authentic, relatable relationship.

One of Crowley’s biggest successes is just how natural he’s able to make Tobias and Almut’s relationship both look and feel. Yes, there’s undoubtedly a degree of bougieness to the couple’s aspirational middle-class lives, along with a few heightened narrative moments such as Almut’s participation in the Bocuse d'Or (the chef Olympics), however, outside of these amplified elements, We Live in Time feels admirably – and often painfully – real.

Riding high on Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s effortless chemistry and bolstered by a highly effective, frequently heart-breaking non-linear narrative, We Live in Time is a delicate, affecting, thoroughly charming slice-of-life love story. Narrative contrivances aside, We Live in Time lands its emotional punches, as it effectively intersects with the concept of memory and those quiet moments of life mundanity that we so often take for granted.