moviereview - Love in the Time of Cholera

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

	Columbia, circa 1870. Florentino falls head over heels in love but it will take another five decades before his passion will be fulfilled. Based on the best-selling novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.	score 2	moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable)
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Cast
Javier Bardem, Giovanni Mezzogirno, Benjamin Bratt, John Leguzamo, Liev Schreiber

Director
Mike Newell

Screenwriter
Ronald Harwood

Country
USA

Rating / Running Time
MA / 139 minutes

Australian Release
March 2008

Official Site

Until now, none of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s million-seller novels have been filmed, and with good reason. His texts tread a fine line between earnest melodrama and magical realism. What springs eloquent on paper risks appearing sudsy on screen and so it is with Mike Newell’s adaptation of this epic assault on the illness of love. That he tackles the material as a straight-line narrative is the first of many problems.

Columbia circa 1870 and young Florentino (Javier Bardem) learns he is destined to love Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiomo). Her protective father (John Leguizamo) breaks the spell, enabling his daughter to marry Dr. Urbino (Benjamin Bratt) and live an uncomplicated life. Five decades pass, Urbino dies and old Florentino finally makes his move. The essence of love is found in the margins.

Or it would be if there were any margins. Sumptuous design is the only distraction from Newell’s chronic and persistent mishandling of material. Riddled with hoot-worthy dialogue – “Shoot me – there is no greater glory than to die for love!” – this is Latin romanticism writ large. It requires a lightness to coax airy themes from the somewhat ridiculous reality of Florentino’s obsession.

Instead, Love in the Time of Cholera hits the deck hard. The whimsy that allowed Chocolat to fly enabled greater expression. Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) misses the point and opts for surging melodrama and unpersuasive age makeup to tell it like it is. Bardem struggles to convince that he’s twenty, much less eighty and his co-stars fare no better. Unlike the unfilmable novel, Newell’s discordant picture exhibits the worst symptoms of fever itself: unpleasant to endure then quickly forgotten.

// COLIN FRASER