(Toronto) Oscar-nominated actors Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh have a hard time explaining how onscreen chemistry is created, but they have it in spades in the new romantic film We Live in Timewhich premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
“It was a magical experience,” the 28-year-old British actress told AFP on Saturday, shortly after the film’s premiere, which was warmly received on Friday.
The film tells the story of star chef Almut (Pugh) and Tobias (Garfield), an employee of the cereal company Weetabix, who meet in the most awkward way possible: she runs him over with her car.
Director John Crowley takes the audience on the intimate journey of their love story, from dates and steamy sex to starting a family and battling cancer, through snapshots of their lives, all out of order.
For Florence Pugh, the two actors learned more about their characters and each other as filming progressed.
PHOTO CHRISTOPHER KATSAROV, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
Florence Pugh
“We talked about what chemistry is and where it comes from, and ultimately we don’t know, other than the fact that we were both ready to jump together and that’s probably why the movie seems so crazy and so raw,” he explained.
There are indeed moments of brutal anger between the couple, but also a paralyzing sadness and, before that, the wild excitement of having a child by giving birth in an emergency in a gas station toilet.
“I’m so happy I did it and I got to do it with Florence,” Andrew Garfield told AFP on Saturday.
“I don’t think it was meant to be with anyone else,” added the 41-year-old actor, who was on a break when he received the script from Nick Payne and quickly jumped at the chance to work with Crowley, who had directed him in Boy A (2007).
The British-American actor said the film was “like a sacred healing ritual,” allowing him to deal with “some losses that I’ve suffered and some longings that I’ve had.”
“Old soul”
For Crowley, the non-linear structure of Payne’s script is a “playful invitation to the audience to start piecing together the film.”
He told AFP that filming took place in disarray, although the team did not want the two actors to “jump schizophrenically” from one period to another every day.
The few days where there were scenes that took place in three different eras “were a real headache for them” and “a very interesting technical and emotional exercise,” he continued.
After working last year on the hugely successful Oppenheimer and the science fiction epic Dune 2Florence Pugh mentioned that she was delighted with the gender change for We Live in Timewhich will be released in a limited version in the United States on October 11 and in France on January 22, 2025.
“I’ve been wanting to do a love story for a while,” she said.
When her character learns she has ovarian cancer, she struggles to balance the little time she has left between her family and her professional goals.
“The things she experiences in the story are the things I see in my friends, my sisters and my mother, and now in myself,” the actress said, referring to the hectic juggling of career, love, motherhood and health.
When asked about the 13-year age difference between the two actors, Crowley felt that it quickly became irrelevant due to their palpable connection.
“Florence is an old soul,” the director said. “She has more weight and, in a way, Andrew, who is also an old soul, has a boyish quality,” he continued.