We Live in Time suffers all the terrible pitfalls of the ‘romantic cancer weepy’ subgenre

As a film critic, occasionally you have to wade into cinematic waters that you know are inhospitable — genres, projects and concepts that rub you the wrong way. For me? That subgenre is “romantic cancer weepies.” While I basically live for not-meant-to-be romances, the usually saccharine fateful violence of these types of romances irk me to the core. They strike me as romantic fantasies for those who want to be young and beautiful forever. The undercurrent of these types of films is that the purity of the couple’s love will be enshrined forever in a youthful ember; protected from time and hardship. The actual hardship of disease, particularly the interminable corruption of time into something paradoxically endless and finite, feels like a shameful secret — something to be hidden away. 

We Live in Time, starring Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield, does little to cure me of my adversity to the genre. Though the cast is above average and the movie at least attempts something different by adopting a non-linear storyline, the film falls for all the terrible tropes that I hate, and audiences who yearn for these weepies likely love. The ugliness of disease is relegated mostly off-frame or to empowering moments. Though the advertising campaign tries to frame this approach as a means of creating a story about a powerful face-off with mortality, it strikes me as cowardly more than anything else: Cancer reduced to a plot twist sent to complicate what would otherwise be a “perfect” love story.

The characters are paper-thin. It feels like romance for the Tumblr set, even down to the casting of two popular fetish actors of the film fandom pages. They know how to look at each other, touch each other in such a way that seems orchestrated towards GIFs and screencap quotations. They’re beautiful, they’re quirky and they’re made for each other… until the cruel arm of disease breaks them apart. 

Much has been made of the film’s sex scenes, as the PR teams have fed into the publicity machine stories of the actors being so “caught up” in the scenes that they didn’t hear the director cut. On paper, the movie has a refreshing amount of sex, though in practice, it’s as Disney-fied as anything else in the movie. It’s a golden-toned, evasive and glossy version of love, something that feels like a glorified advertisement rather than anything profound or moving. It’s physical only in the brightest terms, and the intimate connection between the characters is limited to the “healthy” years. Though spiritually, our character’s love “transcends” the physical for something more spiritual, the movie’s approach only underscores the idea that sickness needs to be hidden away, relegated to the sidelines, or elliptical time jumps. 

The film has a spiritual ugliness that only weighs more heavily as the movie goes on. It offers little dignity in sickness or eventual death. It merely exists as a vehicle of fantasy. The movie’s glossy Hallmark look and silly clichés feel packaged for trailers rather than something cohesive or generous. It’s a movie romance that does little but enshrine its women characters into a state of permanent perfection; her worst sin being that she wants to be remembered for something more than her illness. It’s an ambitious desire in a film that encases every action and movement within the inevitability of her death. 

There’s surely an audience that loves these types of films and it’s hard for me to discourage them from seeing it. It’s above average in the sense that it features two charismatic leads, but is otherwise completely unremarkable in every foreseeable storybeat. The same way that I love a horror film that delivers a minor twist on a stupid slasher movie, there are likely people who get the same excitement from this heartbreak hotel. It’s not for me, but maybe it’s for you. ■

We Live in Time is now playing in Montreal theatres.

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