'Cholera' a love story for all times
Hollywood sometimes goofs when it tries to translate great novels into movie form ("The Great Gatsby," for example).
Not with "Love in the Time of Cholera."
This entertaining, intense movie, based on the 1985 novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, does the book proud.
Mainly a drama, but with comedy peppered in, "Love" tells the story of a man who is willing to wait a lifetime to be with the woman he loves.
The movie, set in Colombia during the cholera epidemic of the late 1800s, chronicles the life of a man starting when he is a lovesick teenager and carrying through to his golden years.
While the compelling story is the movie's strength, the outstanding acting -- particularly the Oscar-worthy performance of Javier Bardem -- gives the film heart.
Bardem plays Florentino Arizo, a sensitive, poetry-writing telegraph deliveryman whose closest friend is his mother.
At first sight, Florentino falls in love with a doe-eyed young woman named Fermina Daza (the not-very-Colombian-looking Giovanna Mezzogiorno).
Fermina's father forbids her from marrying him ("You are much too beautiful to marry a telegraph deliveryman!") and, in order to end their relationship, hauls her off to live in a rural part of the country.
During all of the movie's travel scenes, Colombian-born singer Shakira yodels to ethnic music.
Florentino manages to find his beloved Fermina, but she breaks his heart by telling him to leave her alone because their young love is just an "illusion." Crushed, Florentino returns home and finds the only thing that helps his broken heart is the "company" of hundreds of women. While he adds notches to his bedpost, Fermina ends up in a loveless marriage to the esteemed Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt).
Fifty years pass, and when Urbino dies, the elderly Florentino leaps out of bed with his newest young lover and reappears in Fermina's life.
Even though the story is part fantasy, its numerous story lines translate well to love in 2007 (holding a candle for a married woman; an overprotective dad; a woman struggling to choose between a successful, rich man and a content, average man; etc.)
If you don't overanalyze the characters -- by questioning Florentino's sex appeal and endless devotion or Fermina's coldness -- then you will be swept up in the love story.
The movie's weakest moments are the eew-gross (and questionably necessary) sex scene with the reunited 70-something lovebirds, and the unconvincing adoration that many young women have for the senior Florentino.
Still, this heartwarming story makes it easy to love "Love."
"Love in the Time of Cholera"
3 stars out of four
Opens today
Javier Bardem as Florentino Arizo
Giovanna
Mezzogiorno as Fermina Daza
Benjamin Bratt as Dr. Juvenal Urbino
Catalina Sandino as Hildebranda
Moreno as Sanchez
Hector Elizondo Don Leo
Written by Ronald Harwood; based on the novel by Gabriel García Márquez. Produced by Scott Steindorff. Directed by Mike Newell. A New Line Cinema and Stone Village Pictures release. Rated R (sexual situations, nudity, language). Running time: 138 minutes.