ShowBiz Forum - messages #22684 .1

ShowBiz Forum

Messages

Prospero Blocks

Hot Celebrity Searches

Chat Center

	Hot Movies Topic: Hot Movies
	The Drive-In Topic: The Drive-In

Board Folders

	Ask the Experts 1376 msgs in 79 dscns Latest: 5/5/09
	Industry News/... 5650 msgs in -132 dscns Latest: Nov-16
	Weekly ShowBiz... 4474 msgs in -101 dscns Latest: Nov-19
	Celebrity News... 11024 msgs in 550 dscns Latest: Nov-19
	TV/Movie Celebs 1961 msgs in 168 dscns Latest: Oct-10
	Music/Other Ce... 1316 msgs in 87 dscns Latest: Sep-14
	You Decide: Ho... 1322 msgs in 110 dscns Latest: Oct-18
	Movie Talk 6173 msgs in -71 dscns Latest: Nov-11
	Harvey Karten'... 2106 msgs in 803 dscns Latest: Nov-19
	World of Enter... 814 msgs in 121 dscns Latest: 9/18/08
	Home Video/DVD 1358 msgs in 234 dscns Latest: Oct-20
	Screenwriting 220 msgs in 31 dscns Latest: 5/10/07
	Theater & Music 834 msgs in 233 dscns Latest: Nov-18
	The Green Room 9445 msgs in 567 dscns Latest: Jun-2

Message Area

To list

New

Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Love in the Time of Cholera

Print Discussion

#1 of 3 Posted 10/8/07 11:58 AM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 22684.1 ]

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
New Line Cinema/ Stone Village Pictures
Grade: A-
Directed by:    Mike Newell
Written By: Ronald Harwood, from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel
Cast:   Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, John Leguizamo, Liev Schreiber, Laura Harring,
Benjamin Bratt, Hector Elizondo,
Catalina Sandino Moreno, Ana Claudia Talancon
Screened at: Macklowe, NYC, 10/3/07
Opens: November 16, 2007

Authors have a right to be wary about how their books are adapted for the screen, but in the case of the
English-language film "Love in the Time of Cholera," Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez should
be honored and delighted indeed by the director Mike Newell's grasp of the essence of the novel.
Photographed by Affonso Beato in the lovely Colombia seacoast city of Cartagena, the film is filled with
as much delicious comedy as it is rich in humanity.   It certainly did not hurt to have Mike Newell at the
helm–the director responsible for such box office and critical successes as "Four Weddings and a
Funeral" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." The screen is filled with actors utilizing Spanish
accents with various degrees of proficiency, its principal performers hailing from Spain (Javier Bardem),
Italy (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Brazil (Fernanda Montenegro), Colombia (Catalina Sandino Moreno and
John Leguizmo), California (Benjamin Bratt) and New York (Hector Elizondo).

Though Marquez did not incorporate his own political views into his 1985 "El amor en los tiempos de
colera" (the man has been a political activist, a support of Fidel Castro, and an advocate of
independence for Puerto Rico), he gave the world a love story that should have readers in their later
years especially, and now viewers as well, cheering more than for Mark Rydell's "On Golden Pond."
"Love in the Time of Cholera" evokes the concept that there really is such a thing as undying love.
Though some psychologists tell us that romantic love is a passing, adolescent ,hormone-driven phase,
Ronald Harwood, who scripted this movie from Marquez's book, advises otherwise. The tagline, "How
long would you wait for love?" defines the plight of a man who, rejected during his adolescence by a
blushing 20-year-old who loved him reciprocally at first sight, never gave up the dream of spending his
life with her however long that may take.

Photographer Beato shows us scenes from the village of Cartagena to the farmlands outside, a
chronicle which takes in the fifty-year period straddling the 19th and 20th centuries. We are privy to the
feelings of the central character, Fiorentino Ariza (Javier Bardem, though played as a teen by Unax
Ugalde). He cannot help staring at the lovely but shy Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogirno), who is
regularly accompanied by the lively, freethinking Hildebranda Sanchez (Catalina Sandino Moreno,). The
film is framed by the accidental death from a fall out of a mango tree by the 80-year-old Dr. Juvenal
Urbino (Benjamin Bratt), married for a half century to the 72-year-old Fermina Daza (Giovanna
Mezzogiorno). Visited on the day of the funeral by Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem), she is enraged at
the gall of a man who professes his lifetime love for her, at which point director Newell flashes back to
the early courtship and proceeds through some fifty-two years of their lives.

When the two are in their early twenties, Fermina rejects the attentions of the lovesick Florentino, in part
because her father, Lorenzo (John Leguizamo), did not want her to marry a mere telegraph operator. At
a time that a deadly cholera epidemic was raging and Fermina is suspected of having contracted the
illness, she is successfully treated by the suave Dr. Urbano, while her true love, torn apart by the loss of
this woman, literally cries in front of his concerned mother, Transito (Fernanda Montenegro).
Florentino's rich uncle Don Leo (Hector Elizondo) tries to cheer him up by giving him a job far away that
would hopefully allow him to forget her, but instead, Florentino finds some limited solace through a string
of affairs that would be the envy of Don Juan and Casanova and maybe even Wilt Chamberlain–623
women right through his seventies–liaisons which supply much of the rich comedy in the story.
What these women see in this sad, philosophic man who is described in the novel as having the
personality of an undertaker is, by Florentino's own reckoning, the sight of a man who needs love.

Presumably the five-member make-up team for the production will be considered for end-year awards
particularly for the changes they have made to Mr. Bardem's appearance. The Canary-Islands-born
performer grows increasingly bald, dons half-glasses for reading, his graying mustache adding visually
to some of Shakepeare's Seven Ages of Man. Bardem, a prolific professional known to the indie crowd
as Augustin Rejas in John Malkovich's "The Dance Upstairs" (a detective tracking down an anarchist
who is leading a revolution against a South American fascist government), easily carries the film
throughout its two hours and twenty minutes despite–or perhaps because of–his understated
confessions of love and views of life's meaning. This is epic movie-making that does honor to
Marquez's vision.

Rated R. 140   minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Edited 10/17/07 by harveykarten

Options

#2 of 3 Posted 11/26/07 1:31 PM

From orlandoyletty Posts 1 Last 11/26/07
To harveykarten [Msg # 22684.2 22684.1 ]

I am doing some research for an /english report I need to know how do you rate the actors for the movie Love in the Time of Cholera?

Options

#3 of 3 Posted 11/26/07 1:41 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To orlandoyletty [Msg # 22684.3 22684.2 ] (Unread)

Orlando - Concentrate on the key person, Javier Bardem, and show how protean an actor he is (your English teacher will be impressed by your use of that word). Do you think he is equally able to play a psycho serial killer in "No Country for Old Men" and a lovesick hangdog in "Love in the Time of Cholera?" Why do you suppose so many women fall for him when David Denby of New Yorker magazine says that he acts like the kind of guy that women would sooner give chicken soup to than make love to?

English teachers LOVE papers that compare and contrast, so make sure you see "No Country for Old Men" as well as "Cholera," and also try to see Bardem in "Mar Adento," which won the 2005 Oscar for best foreign language film about a paralyzed man who fought a 30-year campaign for euthanasia.

Options

Print Discussion

Harvey Karten's Reviews