Spoilers ahead. Trigger warnings for cancer, its complications and a graphic birth scene.

“We Live in Time” presents itself as a standard love story, though it is anything but. Tobias (Andrew Garfield), a recent divorcé, meets Almut (Florence Pugh), an up-and-coming chef, when she hits him with her car. They fall in love, go through the trials and tribulations of making a life together and navigate a cancer diagnosis. The movie is split between the story of how they met and the modern day.

“We Live in Time” has all the elements of a classic love story: a meet-cute, a reason why the couple would never work and a dramatic scene in which they finally get together. The audience gets to fall in love with Almut and Tobias over the course of years. They argue about career goals and whether or not they want children and a traditional family, finally choosing to be with each other in the end. However, not long after they get together, Almut is diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She grapples with wanting to have kids now that that choice is being taken away from her. This is a sobering moment in the film as Almut has previously been staunchly against a traditional family. Almut and Tobias stay together through her treatment and once she is in remission, they have a daughter after rounds of IVF. For a while, all is well. Tobias and Almut raise their daughter, build up a home and restaurant. It is a picture-perfect love story ending, but this is not where the film ends.

Years later, Almut’s ovarian cancer relapses. She has doubts about going through grueling treatment again and giving up her career as a chef. Tobias urges her to carry on with chemotherapy and put her career on hold to recover. Almut agrees to go through with chemotherapy, though she enters a high stakes cooking competition behind Tobias’ back. The treatment proves unsuccessful and Almut works through her deteriorating health to train. Just before the finals, Tobias finds out that Almut has been putting herself under more stress with the competition. Though he ultimately supports her, it is a rough fight. Almut successfully competes in the competition and walks off the stage happily, surrounded by family. While the movie does not directly confirm Almut passes away, the film closes with a touching scene of Tobias and their daughter in the garden of their family home, without Almut but happy.

When I say “We Live in Time” is a masterclass in writing love and loss, I think the love part is self-explanatory. Almut and Tobias fall in love like real people. They are fully developed adults who deal with real challenges in their relationship and come out stronger together. That said, I feel the writing of loss in the film deserves more attention. When “We Live in Time” was first announced, it seemed all anyone could talk about was that Pugh and Garfield were going to be starring in a romance movie together. The second was of course the ugly horse carousel meme from this past summer, which is on screen for a shockingly short period of time. These are two actors who have earned respect across genres. You can feel Pugh’s anger when Almut learns about her relapse and grapples with her legacy. There is not a moment when Garfield’s character is teary-eyed and the audience is not. The performances are emotional, guttural and real.

Cancer is a delicate topic in media. We are coming off of the “terminally ill romance” craze of the 2010s. Films like “The Fault in Our Stars” (2014) and “Five Feet Apart” (2019) enraptured audiences with stories of teenagers falling in love and dealing with the tragedy of a terminal illness at a young age. These films were intensely emotional and often criticized for making light of cancer. The disease was almost fetishized; cancer is the character, not the person. In the wake of this boom in terminally ill romances, the public has turned against the genre. I will admit that I was hesitant to watch “We Live in Time” for this same reason. I had concerns that Almut’s cancer would not be treated with the respect she deserves—that she would become entirely her cancer. I was proven wrong.

With a major theme of the movie being what we leave behind when we’re gone, the film needed its ending to land right. It did. The entire reason Almut chooses to sacrifice her health to compete is the fact she wants to leave something behind. She wants to be more than someone’s “dead mom.” Given her previous apprehension towards being tied down to a family, this makes sense. Almut is highly individualistic. This humanizes Almut immensely and draws a stark distinction from the terminally ill romances of the decade prior. Almut is as real as anyone else and she is not her cancer. Additionally, she is the type of person who would want to be remembered fondly in death.

The film never directly says that Almut dies. The audience is not subjected to a gruesome death or a morbid funeral scene as they would have been in previous terminally ill romances. There are no cheap shots at emotion from shockingly horrific events. Early on in the film, Tobias and Almut joke about getting a dog to ease the pain of Almut’s eventual death for their daughter. The closing scene is Tobias, their daughter and their new dog in the garden that Almut loved. They are happy because they had time with a wonderful person even if it is over now. The subtlety of the ending is what makes it work. While my theater had tears throughout the film, this garnered genuine sobs. Life really does move on after death, and it is the realism that hurts the most. This is the happiest ending possible.

“We Live in Time” is fundamentally about love, but it is a hard watch. There are definitive triggers for cancer and loss of life due to said cancer. As someone who has had cancer impact their family I will say this: it hurt more than anything watching the movie, but walking out of that theater felt wonderful. The writers cared about the story and knew how important it was; this horrendous part of life was finally represented well. Cancer at such a young age, impacting a wonderful family is a tragedy—it is messy, but it is real. There is as much love and truth and care in that script as there should be. It is a good hurt.

If you have the chance to catch “We Live in Time” in theaters, I urge you to take it. If not, watch it at home with people you love, and a box of tissues.