Film Reviews

Love in the Time of Cholera

• Rating:
• Director: Mike Newell
• Starring: Benjamin Bratt
• Details: US / 138mins (15A).

"I have waited for this opportunity for 51 years, 9 months and 4 days." Adapted from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, Love In The Time Of Cholera is about love and ... well, love. Florentino (Bardem) is a telegram clerk who falls in love with Fermina (Mezzogiorno), the daughter of a rich businessman. Her father (Leguizamo) doesn't take too kindly to Florentino and whisks Fermina away to the country and out of Florentino's life forever. He hurtles himself into sorrow, vowing to stay a virgin for his one true love, only to throw himself headlong into any cleavage that happens by with equal relish (by the time he reaches old age, he has over 500 notches on his bedpost). Fermina, meanwhile, is pushed into a marriage with a handsome doctor (Bratt). Will the star-crossed lovers ever meet again? The novel, we're told, is about suffering and love or love as an emotional and physical disease, and although Newell and his writer Ronald Harwood try hard to get that across, they make one serious faux pas. Marquez's novel might have worked by juxtaposing Fermina's and Florentino's love lives, but film is a different medium entirely, and the audience's appreciation for Florentino's perpetual broken heart would mean so much more if we see Fermina only when he does. However, by showing us what's happening with her every few minutes, we don't have the same longing as him - and we're supposed to. There are other little slip-ups too: why a different actor plays a teenage Florentino (Unax Ulgade) when Fermina is played by Mezzogiorno throughout doesn't make much sense. But then again, it's pointless talking about what a film should have been. The film is so intense, highly-strung and burning with love in the opening half hour, it undoes itself and just fizzles out; by the time we reach that big emotional ending - and it's a long time coming (never mind the 51 years, 9 months and 4 days, don't forget the 138 mins too) - it's an anti-climax. There's no chemistry between Bardem and Mezzogiorno, either, but that's not their fault - they're only on screen together for a few minutes.

Review by Gavin Burke