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| Javier Bardem has the leading role in the film. |
I just watched the movie "Love in the Time of Cholera", released in 2007, directed by Mike Newell, starring Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno and Benjamin Bratt, and based on Gabriel Garcia Márques bestselling book from 1985.
And though competently told, I see no point whatsoever to the film. After first declaring her love when they are young, Fermina rejects Florentino for no apparent reason, and marries a man she later claims to despise. Well no-one understands women, right? They're not rational, right?
Florentino on his part claims he is saving himself for Fermina, yet keeps a record of the (at least) 622 women he beds while waiting for her. His current mistress when Fermina's husband finally passes away, is so young that no-one suspects them for being lovers, he claims. So officially he's a saint, while at the same time being a Lothario. So who doesn't want to have it both ways, to have the cake and eat it as well? And all the time being able to blame it on the woman who spurned him.
No relationship in the long film (over 2 hrs) looks particularly genuine. Why anyone gets involved with anyone is a mystery, and no, I don't understand why the couple (Florentino and Fermina) gets involved in the first case, but perhaps I'm too crass to believe in love at first sight. The film claims to be about love, but the only love scenes that have any inkling of warmth is toward the end, when the lovers finally gets together in their 70's. Love and sex among septuagenarians are rare on film, indeed!
The pace of the film is slow, the jumps in time are not motivated, the relationships are dull, the acting sincere but pedestrian, the faked spanish accents are hilarious (and excellent actor Liev Schreiber is wasted in a minor part), and the view on male as well as female sexuality is dim, to put it gently. So I just don't get it: WHY make this film?
I suspect it wants to ride on the success of the book, that it for some reason gives someone (the production company?) credits for being "serious" and "artistic"?
The film credits contain a long list of thanks to the government of Colombia, starting with the Vice President, so perhaps it is also sponsored by the Colombian tourist industry? Rightly so, as the film's greatest assets is indeed the excellent photography, including grand views of a great river delta.
But while the so-called production value is immense, I just can't see anyone get excited about the film. It is, as I said, competent, but oh how dull!
A waste of talent, it is.
