One moment, award-winning chef Almut (Florence Pugh) is waking her beloved Tobias (Andrew Garfield) and asking him to sample her latest concoction, the next, it’s the middle of the night, and now-pregnant Almut is parked on the toilet while he times her contractions.

Effective love stories are composed of moments large and small. In “We Live in Time,” John Crowley has made what’s meant to be a greatest-hits version of your typical romantic comedy, serving up all the key scenes from Almut and Tobias’ relationship — meeting one another’s families, the marriage proposal, parenthood, divorce, cancer diagnoses and so on — just not in that order.

It’s a klutzy way to tell a story, but Crowley is confident that the chemistry between Pugh and Garfield is so compelling, people will want to watch his movie again and again, at which point, Almut and Tobias’ memories will have become our memories,...