Love in the Time of Cholera
Directed by Mike Newell
Adaptations tend to pare down their sources, hacking away at the verbose qualities of the written word in order to extrapolate something movie-like. In Mike Newell’s envisioning of Love in the Time of Cholera, however, much of the production effort seems dedicated to synopsizing the prose of Gabriel García Márquez’s 1985 novel. The result is an extravagant costume drama with a heavy bag of visual splendor, but nothing that really distinguishes it as an original work of art. Scenes play out as though the descriptive rhythms of Márquez’s style were scrawled on the back of lavish animated postcards.
Cholera owes much to its creator: The sense of a distinctive period—Colombia at the beginning of the 20th century, as the eponymous disease threatens daily life—and the poetic aura hanging over its lovesick protagonist’s hermetic reality are novelistic in detail. The story itself feels slight by comparison. Meek poet Florentino (Javier Bardem, although the character is played as a teenager by Unax Ungale) falls for a local rich girl named Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), but she’s out of his league. When his calculated seduction doesn’t go according to plan, Florentino shields his pain as an excessive philanderer, keeping a diary of his sexual exploits without fully supplanting his longing for Fermina. The object of his desire marries a pompous doctor (Benjamin Bratt) at the urging of her father (John Leguizamo, looking far too young for the part), while Florentino seeks solace from his supportive mother.
Newell manages to let the movie unravel with a casual pace that takes into account several decades of developments, which speaks to his experience with epic structures on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Nevertheless, the movie relies on an intrinsic, time-honored flaw created by the language issue. An American production, Cholera is in English, although the actors speak it with Spanish-language accents. The dissonance of speech and setting often distracts from the beauty of the images. At times, it leads the sprawling love story into the realm of a cheesy soap opera.
Fortunately, Bardem carries the movie with soft-spoken dialogue and intermittently shameful and naive expressions. This year, he has lent his convincing abilities to several period pieces, including Milos Forman’s Goya’s Ghosts and the Coen’s No Country for Old Men (where his new age killer represents the next generation threat of 1980). In Cholera, movie magic helps him age with extraordinary realism. The film utilizes an extensive flashback that lasts these characters’ entire lives, providing us with a peak into Bardem’s future as a wizened thespian.
Despite its temporal range, the biggest pratfall of the movie is its outdated aura. Newell gives us fabulous scenery and a classic narrative, but none of it becomes involving in the present. In Ingmar Bergman’s Monika, the endearing 1953 account of a free-wheeling girl (Harriet Andersson) whose passive fling with an apathetic local boy (Lars Ekborg) lasts a single heated summer, the tangled nature of sudden passion and fleeting interests remains contemporary. Monika, which screens for two weeks at the IFC Center, offers an alternative exploration of forbidden love. Andersson’s titular character follows the motives of her lust in a continually self-destructive pattern. It’s her personal brand of cholera.
Directed by Mike Newell
Adaptations tend to pare down their sources, hacking away at the verbose qualities of the written word in order to extrapolate something movie-like. In Mike Newell’s envisioning of Love in the Time of Cholera, however, much of the production effort seems dedicated to synopsizing the prose of Gabriel García Márquez’s 1985 novel. The result is an extravagant costume drama with a heavy bag of visual splendor, but nothing that really distinguishes it as an original work of art. Scenes play out as though the descriptive rhythms of Márquez’s style were scrawled on the back of lavish animated postcards.
Cholera owes much to its creator: The sense of a distinctive period—Colombia at the beginning of the 20th century, as the eponymous disease threatens daily life—and the poetic aura hanging over its lovesick protagonist’s hermetic reality are novelistic in detail. The story itself feels slight by comparison. Meek poet Florentino (Javier Bardem, although the character is played as a teenager by Unax Ungale) falls for a local rich girl named Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), but she’s out of his league. When his calculated seduction doesn’t go according to plan, Florentino shields his pain as an excessive philanderer, keeping a diary of his sexual exploits without fully supplanting his longing for Fermina. The object of his desire marries a pompous doctor (Benjamin Bratt) at the urging of her father (John Leguizamo, looking far too young for the part), while Florentino seeks solace from his supportive mother.
Newell manages to let the movie unravel with a casual pace that takes into account several decades of developments, which speaks to his experience with epic structures on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Nevertheless, the movie relies on an intrinsic, time-honored flaw created by the language issue. An American production, Cholera is in English, although the actors speak it with Spanish-language accents. The dissonance of speech and setting often distracts from the beauty of the images. At times, it leads the sprawling love story into the realm of a cheesy soap opera.
Fortunately, Bardem carries the movie with soft-spoken dialogue and intermittently shameful and naive expressions. This year, he has lent his convincing abilities to several period pieces, including Milos Forman’s Goya’s Ghosts and the Coen’s No Country for Old Men (where his new age killer represents the next generation threat of 1980). In Cholera, movie magic helps him age with extraordinary realism. The film utilizes an extensive flashback that lasts these characters’ entire lives, providing us with a peak into Bardem’s future as a wizened thespian.
Despite its temporal range, the biggest pratfall of the movie is its outdated aura. Newell gives us fabulous scenery and a classic narrative, but none of it becomes involving in the present. In Ingmar Bergman’s Monika, the endearing 1953 account of a free-wheeling girl (Harriet Andersson) whose passive fling with an apathetic local boy (Lars Ekborg) lasts a single heated summer, the tangled nature of sudden passion and fleeting interests remains contemporary. Monika, which screens for two weeks at the IFC Center, offers an alternative exploration of forbidden love. Andersson’s titular character follows the motives of her lust in a continually self-destructive pattern. It’s her personal brand of cholera.
