
There's a little cholera in the middle and some love at the beginning and end, but Mike Newell's "Love in the Time of Cholera" is mostly about romantic obsession and never-ending frustration - the latter of which may jibe with the audience's reaction.
Adapted by Ron Harwood from Gabriel Garcia Marquez' 1985 novel, "Love" tells the story of an epic triangle covering more than five decades, from 1879 to the early 1930s in Cartagena, Colombia.
The trio is Florentino, a telegraph-office worker; Fermina, the daughter of a domineering mule driver, and Dr. Urbino, the cholera specialist who marries Fermina and stands between her and Florentino for half a century.
Marquez's novel is about the nobility of suffering for love, and no question about it, Florentino (Javier Bardem) suffers. From the moment Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is whisked away from Cartagena by her boorish father (played as a cartoon villain by John Leguizamo), Florentino is determined to have her even if he has to wait a lifetime - or die in the meantime.
Fermina gets over Florentino at about the same pace as she begins to fall in love with her kind and deserving husband (Benjamin Bratt). Florentino keeps appearing in her life like a stalker at social functions and in public places, but he remains a romantic abstraction to her.
For his part, Florentino spends his waiting years reading romantic poetry, seducing women (more than 600 by his last count) and getting rich enough to "be worthy of a great lady."
"Love" would be intolerably boring were it not for the frequent injections of humor, thanks largely to Hector Elizondo as Florentino's uncle, and for Bardem's ultimately winning performance.
It takes the longest time to warm up to Florentino, first because the young actor (Unax Ugalde) playing him as a lovestruck teen wears a prosthetic nose that makes him look deformed, and then because Bardem is so awkward playing him as a young adult.
Eventually, the actors' and characters' ages reach a passable middle ground. Still, it is only after Florentino, in his 70s, gets his way with the love of his life that we get the film's message: There is hope for us all.
Source: nydailynews.com
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