The greatest challenge for filmmakers of period pieces is to infuse the work with some degree of relevance to modern culture. Perhaps in order to feed the current appetite for anti-hero male fantasies of social revenge and success, Mike Newell has managed to flesh out the sexual journey of it's retro-nerd protagonist, replete with the popular contagion of entitlement and now-expected rewards of conquest.
Gabriel García Márquez' 1985 novel "Love in the Time of Cholera" remains a testament to Romance as Illusion, and Love as a higher calling to those with the maturity and understanding of humanity to appreciate it. However, in Newell's ambitious adaptation, save for the characters aging fifty-odd years, there is neither much maturity nor understanding of humanity.
When the neophyte romantic Florentino Ariza (Unax Ugalde) spies the young Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) promenading through the plaza one day, he is forever smitten. Captivated by her beauty, (a mystery due to the irredeemable casting blunder), he pledges to remain a virgin until they can be together. After a heated exchange of letters, a sweet minstrel stroll in her courtyard, and a long-distance barrage of telegraphed yearnings, Fermina harshly rejects him citing the temporary insanity of youth. At this point all passion exits the film for good.
Fermina 's father (John Leguizamo, who inexplicably transports Queens gang-tough shtick to 19th century Columbia) manages to broker his daughter to Juvenal Urbino, a successful doctor (Benjamin Bratt) after she recovers nicely from a false bout of cholera. The doctor too, you see, is so taken with his patient's beauty he must have her for his own. Maybe there is more in the water down there than cholera-- something that addles the senses of men. The lovely Catalina Sandino Moreno as one of Fermina's countryside ladies-in-waiting outshines Fermina in every scene they share. You wonder why the men aren't lining up to place a bid on her.
Fast forward to an older Florentino (now played by Javier Bardem) using sex with women, lots of women, to alleviate the pain of his separation from Fermina. His pain endures for more than fifty years. Did I mention he alleviates his pain with lots and lots of women? Pain never looked so good.
Part drama, part comedy, there is a curious tone to this movie: it's difficult to tell where the laughs were intended. At first what seems like a camp-romp, purposely anachronistic and self-reflexive, the movie confounds when it appears that the actors are playing it for real. Due to the nerdy fecklessness of the young Florentino, we're willing to overlook some of the earlier stilted moments. Yet there is some dialogue so unfortunate (supposedly lifted verbatim from the rumination-heavy novel), that it's doubtful it could be uttered out loud in any century with a straight face.
Bardem, one of a handful of actors who can elicit our investment in his character no matter how despicable and self-serving his actions, carries the film. (Ugalde, who plays the younger Florentino as a puppy dog eyed Romeo, who looks like he could be Bardem's younger brother, deftly sets up the delusional character's obsessive nature that is handed off like a baton for Bardem to carry the rest of his days.) Giovanna Mezzogiorno on the other hand, must age from late teens to her seventies, and she does so less convincingly. The filmmakers evidently didn't trust that audiences could overlook the horror of an older actress to take us from maturity on.
Bratt must make the transformation across the years as well, but the three of them seem to decompose at different rates, making for a few jarring scenes. Some critics have lauded the make-up crew's accomplishments. Frankly, the pancake looks as though it's in danger of sliding from faces in the jungle heat. Bardem, alone here in the ability to age in voice, posture, tempo and demeanor, in addition to the cosmetics, helps provide a signpost as to where we are in the life cycle-- just in case Florentino's ever-growing list of sexual conquests doesn't mark the time clearly enough.
What's lacking most in the script by Ronald Harwood (so adept with his exquisite "Diving Bell and the Butterfly") is a thriving spirit, a transcendence, an irony. The movie is simply a superficial accrual of loathing: Florentino's of society, of Love, of the fate that denies him earthly happiness and which spurs his mission to bed more than 600 women in order to drive out the demon of Fermina that possesses him; Fermina's of herself as her body has the audacity to age, of her fading beauty, and of her husband's wandering eye. (Such is the fate of women whose sense of self-worth relies solely on their appearance.) Even at seventy, she still can't bear to make love with the lights on. You'd hope that she would grow comfortable in her own skin at some point in her life. Lucky for her, decrepit old Florentino doesn't see her as she really is-- he's still imagining her as a youthful sprite from a bygone time.
The novel is a rich examination of love in its many incarnations with deeper themes underscoring how Romantic Love can disease the soul just as the dreaded cholera ravaged humankind. This adaptation is plagued with the endemic and dated shallowness of a tele-novela steeped in the tradition of patriarchal virulence disguised as drama and conflict. Interesting how Newell takes the book's passionate struggle of a male masochist trying to reconcile his idealism, and mutates it into an Apatow-styled adventure of a virginal lovesick loser turned lothario, who still gets the girl in the end.
Uninspired camera work and sloppy transitions sadly waste the exotic locations. For all the sumptuous scenery and meticulous period set design, the movie has the feel of a "Lifetime Television for Women" M.O.W. Maybe there's a new cable network I don't know about: "Mid-Lifetime Television for Men" that this project can kick off.
Gabriel García Márquez' 1985 novel "Love in the Time of Cholera" remains a testament to Romance as Illusion, and Love as a higher calling to those with the maturity and understanding of humanity to appreciate it. However, in Newell's ambitious adaptation, save for the characters aging fifty-odd years, there is neither much maturity nor understanding of humanity.
When the neophyte romantic Florentino Ariza (Unax Ugalde) spies the young Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) promenading through the plaza one day, he is forever smitten. Captivated by her beauty, (a mystery due to the irredeemable casting blunder), he pledges to remain a virgin until they can be together. After a heated exchange of letters, a sweet minstrel stroll in her courtyard, and a long-distance barrage of telegraphed yearnings, Fermina harshly rejects him citing the temporary insanity of youth. At this point all passion exits the film for good.
Fermina 's father (John Leguizamo, who inexplicably transports Queens gang-tough shtick to 19th century Columbia) manages to broker his daughter to Juvenal Urbino, a successful doctor (Benjamin Bratt) after she recovers nicely from a false bout of cholera. The doctor too, you see, is so taken with his patient's beauty he must have her for his own. Maybe there is more in the water down there than cholera-- something that addles the senses of men. The lovely Catalina Sandino Moreno as one of Fermina's countryside ladies-in-waiting outshines Fermina in every scene they share. You wonder why the men aren't lining up to place a bid on her.
Fast forward to an older Florentino (now played by Javier Bardem) using sex with women, lots of women, to alleviate the pain of his separation from Fermina. His pain endures for more than fifty years. Did I mention he alleviates his pain with lots and lots of women? Pain never looked so good.
Part drama, part comedy, there is a curious tone to this movie: it's difficult to tell where the laughs were intended. At first what seems like a camp-romp, purposely anachronistic and self-reflexive, the movie confounds when it appears that the actors are playing it for real. Due to the nerdy fecklessness of the young Florentino, we're willing to overlook some of the earlier stilted moments. Yet there is some dialogue so unfortunate (supposedly lifted verbatim from the rumination-heavy novel), that it's doubtful it could be uttered out loud in any century with a straight face.
Bardem, one of a handful of actors who can elicit our investment in his character no matter how despicable and self-serving his actions, carries the film. (Ugalde, who plays the younger Florentino as a puppy dog eyed Romeo, who looks like he could be Bardem's younger brother, deftly sets up the delusional character's obsessive nature that is handed off like a baton for Bardem to carry the rest of his days.) Giovanna Mezzogiorno on the other hand, must age from late teens to her seventies, and she does so less convincingly. The filmmakers evidently didn't trust that audiences could overlook the horror of an older actress to take us from maturity on.
Bratt must make the transformation across the years as well, but the three of them seem to decompose at different rates, making for a few jarring scenes. Some critics have lauded the make-up crew's accomplishments. Frankly, the pancake looks as though it's in danger of sliding from faces in the jungle heat. Bardem, alone here in the ability to age in voice, posture, tempo and demeanor, in addition to the cosmetics, helps provide a signpost as to where we are in the life cycle-- just in case Florentino's ever-growing list of sexual conquests doesn't mark the time clearly enough.
What's lacking most in the script by Ronald Harwood (so adept with his exquisite "Diving Bell and the Butterfly") is a thriving spirit, a transcendence, an irony. The movie is simply a superficial accrual of loathing: Florentino's of society, of Love, of the fate that denies him earthly happiness and which spurs his mission to bed more than 600 women in order to drive out the demon of Fermina that possesses him; Fermina's of herself as her body has the audacity to age, of her fading beauty, and of her husband's wandering eye. (Such is the fate of women whose sense of self-worth relies solely on their appearance.) Even at seventy, she still can't bear to make love with the lights on. You'd hope that she would grow comfortable in her own skin at some point in her life. Lucky for her, decrepit old Florentino doesn't see her as she really is-- he's still imagining her as a youthful sprite from a bygone time.
The novel is a rich examination of love in its many incarnations with deeper themes underscoring how Romantic Love can disease the soul just as the dreaded cholera ravaged humankind. This adaptation is plagued with the endemic and dated shallowness of a tele-novela steeped in the tradition of patriarchal virulence disguised as drama and conflict. Interesting how Newell takes the book's passionate struggle of a male masochist trying to reconcile his idealism, and mutates it into an Apatow-styled adventure of a virginal lovesick loser turned lothario, who still gets the girl in the end.
Uninspired camera work and sloppy transitions sadly waste the exotic locations. For all the sumptuous scenery and meticulous period set design, the movie has the feel of a "Lifetime Television for Women" M.O.W. Maybe there's a new cable network I don't know about: "Mid-Lifetime Television for Men" that this project can kick off.