Love in the Time of Cholera: Movie
A Disappointing Screen Adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Novel
Mannered performances and Mike Newell's heavy-handed direction lack the subtlety of magical realism.
It is difficult to imagine an artistically riskier proposition than trying to bring a literary work of staggering genius to the screen. The odds are stacked against the movie from the start; comparisons with the novel will be as brutal as they are inevitable. This problem is compounded when dealing with a genre as delicately fertile as magical realism.
Thus, one might be expected to discard too-rigid expectations before sitting down to watch Love in the Time of Cholera, adapted by screenwriter Ronald Harwood and director Mike Newell from the novel by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. Even so, the adaptation is disheartening.
The Love Triangle
The movie opens upon a quiet garden scene, as an aging Dr. Juvenal Urbino climbs a ladder to rescue his parrot from a tree, and haplessly falls to his death. On the heels of his funeral arrives the ancient and mild-mannered Florentino Ariza, who, despite having been roused from a session of sumptuous afternoon lovemaking with his post-pubescent cousin, declares his undying love and fidelity for Urbino’s widow, Fermina. She, righteously offended, throws him from the house and tells him never to speak to her again.
The rest of the movie is the tale of the intricate unwinding of this triangle, from the budding romance between Florentino, a humble clerk, and Fermina, the daughter of a rich mule trader who wants a better match for his daughter; on through Florentino’s struggle to nurture his pure and everlasting love, while palliating his loneliness in an endless procession of women, whom he samples like hors d’oeuvres. All this playing over a fervent undercurrent contrasting passion and disease, pragmatism and love, progress and romanticism.
Over the top
Unfortunately, while the film manages to entertain and buoy the audience along – and despite the beautiful cinematography – the rich tapestry presented by García Marquez is all but lost. The film remains relatively faithful to the novel in terms of plot line – indeed, what beauty the film has comes largely from the strength of the original plot – but it comes up short in two crucial areas: subtlety and subtext.
The film is roundly over-acted from all quarters, indicating a problem perhaps more with Newell’s direction than with the actors themselves. Nearly every gesture seems a caricature of what it’s supposed to convey, as if it’s meant for stage or satire. John Leguizamo’s farcical portrayal of Fermina’s father, Lorenzo Daza, is nearly comical – yet not comical enough to be funny, if it was meant to be. Benjamin Bratt’s Urbino is little more than a mannered fop. The lovely Giovanna Mezzogiorno presents a Fermina who strikes us as shallow, arbitrary and stiff, with little of the deep, provocative charm one would expect in a woman capable of demanding the lifelong devotion of Florentino. Most surprising is Javier Bardem, whose incomparable work of The Sea Inside is nowhere to be found in this Florentino, who comes off as a mawkish dweezle of a human being, rather than a tragically heroic Eros incarnate.
This overplaying has an additional price: that of allowing the actors to believe that what they portray on the surface is more important than what is going on beneath. Missing are the quiet sensual tensions – so patently clear without being explicit in the book – which give us a clue as to why the characters behave as they do; why, for them, it seems their only option.
Recommendation: while the film is watchable, even enjoyable, it might be best to wait for the DVD.
- Grade: C
- Rating: R
- Running Time: 138
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