Well, we’re smack in the middle of Oscar Season and a majority of the Hollywood heavyweights thus far have been just that: heavy. We’ve seen a lot of drug dealing gangsters wreaking havoc with ruthless barbarism and a love of the gun. Noticeably absent have been the stylish love stories that often manage to sweet talk their way to a nomination. Remember all those Cary Grant films of the 40’s and 50’s or when Shakespeare in Love pulled off that monumental upset over Saving Private Ryan in 1999? Fear not, ladies, at long last we have a film for you, even if it is far from Oscar material. Love in the Time of Cholera is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by renowned author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and many consider it to be one of the finest literary love stories written in the 20th Century. British filmmaker Mike Newell (Donnie Brasco, Four Weddings and A Funeral) certainly had his hands full in bringing this beloved work to the Silver Screen.

From the moment he laid eyes on her, Florentino Ariza knew full well that he would love Fermina Daza for the rest of his life. That Fermina (portrayed rather flatly by Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is the daughter of an affluent yet highly unstable businessman (played here by John Leguizamo) who intends to marry his daughter into wealth makes little difference to the working class Florentino. The two eagerly pass notes and embark upon a Shakespearean courtship that ends when Fermina’s father recognizes his daughter’s “weakness” and promptly moves her out of the big city of Cartagena and onto a posh rural plantation; seemingly out of Florentino’s reach. His undying affection allows him to locate her whereabouts after several months of searching, but his soul is dealt a shattering blow when she suddenly and unexpectedly refuses his advances. For the next half century the two lead entirely separate lives and are divided by far more than miles. Fermina, at the behest of her father, marries a vibrant and handsome young doctor named Juvenal Urbino who is at once smitten with her beauty and naïveté. Yet as the years pass and his hair turns gray, Florentino knows to whom his heart will always belong.

From a filmic perspective, this does not seem to be a particularly difficult venture to pull off. But it is. In literature one is given an infinite number of pages to carefully and deftly construct a setting in which the characters are permitted to live and evolve. Fortunately for director Mike Newell, filming on location in Colombia affords the film a stunningly beautiful backdrop full of sensual vivacity. Additionally, his two leading men give strong performances that seem to continually bring the film back from the brink of awfulness. Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men, The Sea Inside) and Benjamin Bratt (Traffic, The Great Raid) star as Florentino Ariza and Dr. Juvenal Urbino respectively. The two have vastly different ideas of happiness and their means of attaining it vary greatly. Florentino, knowing full well that he can never truly love anyone other than Fermina, lives as a bachelor with a raging libido. Alongside his poems of love, he meticulously calculates the number of women who occupy his bed. As he nears old age, we know that the number exceeds 600. Dr. Urbino, on the other hand, begins to take his marriage for granted and continuously struggles to find inner harmony.

Despite the colorful scenery and strong performances from Bardem and Bratt, this film suffers from an acute case of lost identity. Whereas the novel is able to draw upon the cholera scourge and military conflicts plaguing Colombia in the late 19th Century, the movie version seems to bypass these elements for what can only be called “time constraints.” In point of fact, the wretched sickness that spreads throughout the city and countryside is a highly symbolic element used by Gabriel Garcia Marquez to depict the lovesickness felt by Florentino. Director Newell, though, seems to downplay this aspect because the cholera outbreak is merely a footnote in the film and does not play a significant role in the narrative. Additionally, Florentino’s sexual odysseys, ranging from young school girls to middle-aged secretaries to married housewives, displays an evolution from youthful idealism to wizened old age. During these middle years there are only a handful of scenes in which Florentino and Fermina are anywhere near each other and their highly disparate lifestyles greatly minimize the significance of their youthful romance.

The integrity of this film does manage to hang on by a thread, though there are several slippery moments. Javier Bardem, for one, is an actor of the first rate and the oddity of his character pumps much needed life back into the storyline more than once. In the end, however, what makes Love in the Time of Cholera such a disappointing film in comparison to the novel is its continued cherry-picking of romance elements and obvious disregard for the symbolic elements that give the story the necessary volume. In comparison, it would be like summarizing the American Civil War only in terms of military strategy and battles while largely ignoring the human side of things like slavery, emancipation, and endurance of the Constitution. There will undoubtedly be people who enjoy this film, but it continuously comes up short in the most critical areas making it nothing more than a typical old fashioned love story in an exotic location. And, brother, we’ve seen enough of those.

By Chris Virnig