Something’s wrong at the heart of “Love”
Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “Love in the Time of Cholera,” published in the U.S. in 1988, is an epic love story, gently flavored with magic realism. Set in South America during the late 19th and early 20th century, it’s the tale of a man who waits patiently (though not chastely) for 51 years, nine months and four days for the woman he loves. Rich with texture and detail - you can practically smell the humid air, or hear the peddlers’ calls in the marketplace - it’s long been ripe for a lavish movie treatment.
Mike Newell’s screen version of the novel, adapted by Ronald Harwood (”The Pianist”), is certainly lavish. The costumes, by Marit Allen, are lovely and intricate, right down to a dainty hole in a widow’s black lace veil. Affonso Beato’s cinematography revels in twilight, framing the characters in a delicate sapphire glow. Harwood’s screenplay does an elegant job of boiling down the novel’s many pages yet keeping the essential story intact.
And yet … the movie is unsatisfying, in the kind of way that’s hard to pin down precisely; its soul seems to be missing. Perhaps it’s the odd distraction of the movie being in English, with the international cast gamely attempting (with varying success) an accent appropriate to turn-of-the-century Colombia. If ever a film should have been made in Spanish, this one should have been; something’s lost in translation here.
The performance of Javier Bardem in the central role is also problematic. The Spanish actor can be uncannily good in the right roles (he’s terrific in “No Country for Old Men,” also opening this week) and unabashedly hammy in the wrong ones (his sneering bad guy in “Goya’s Ghosts”). Here, he plays Florentino Ariza, a poet and clerk who finds the love of his life, Fermina (Giovanna Mezzegiorno), as a teenager. Dazzled by his 60-page letters, she returns his love - until her father (John Leguizamo), who believes his daughter can aim higher, separates them. Ariza spends the following decades writing and womanizing, until a widowed Fermina enters his life again.
Bardem (taking over for Unax Ugalde, who plays teenage Ariza) portrays the character as childlike and just a bit doltish; you never quite believe a man this serene would be capable of the intense passion on which the novel is built. There’s little chemistry between him and Mezzegiorno (who was lovely in “Facing Windows”), and little opportunity for it. And several of the supporting actors, particularly Leguizamo, give performances of shrieking unsubtlety. The book’s magical mood is lost; the movie’s pretty pictures, alas, make a poor replacement.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com