Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)

Florentino, rejected by the beautiful Fermina at a young age, devotes much of his adult life to carnal affairs as a desperate attempt to heal his broken heart.

Director:

Mike Newell

Writers:

Ronald Harwood (screenplay), Gabriel García Márquez (novel)

Stars:

Benjamin Bratt, Gina Bernard Forbes, Giovanna Mezzogiorno

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Benjamin Bratt	...	Dr. Juvenal Urbino
Gina Bernard Forbes	...	Digna Pardo
Giovanna Mezzogiorno	...	Fermina Urbino
Javier Bardem	...	Florentino Ariza
Marcela Mar	...	America Vicuña
Juan Ángel	...	Marco Aurelio - 40's
Liliana Gonzalez	...	Marco Aurelio's Wife (as Liliana Alvarez Gonzalez)
Catalina Botero	...	Ofelia Urbino - 40's
Miguel Angel Pazos Galindo	...	Ofelia's Husband
Maria Cecilia Herrera	...	Urbino's Sweet Wife
Luis Fernando Hoyos	...	Urbino Urbino
Carlos Duplat	...	Mourner
Francisco Raul Linero	...	Mourner
Unax Ugalde	...	Florentino - Teen
Liev Schreiber	...	Lotario Thugut

Storyline

In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader. Ariza is persistent, writing her constantly, serenading, speaking poetically of love. Her father tries to keep them apart, and then, one day, she sees this love as an illusion. She's soon married to Urbino, a cultured physician, and for years, Ariza carries a torch, finding solace in the arms of women, loving none. After Urbino's fall, are Ariza's hopes delusional?

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Plot Keywords:

love | widow | colombia | marriage | old man | 

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Taglines:

How long would you wait for love?

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sexual content/nudity and brief language

Details

Official Sites:

Official MySpace Official site [jp]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

16 November 2007 (USA)

Also Known As:

El amor en los tiempos del cólera

Filming Locations:

Cartagena, Bolívar, Colombia

Box Office

Budget:

$45,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$1,924,860 (USA) (16 November 2007)

Gross:

$4,584,886 (USA) (14 December 2007)

Company Credits

Production Co:

New Line Cinema, Stone Village Pictures, Grosvenor Park Media

Technical Specs

Runtime:

139 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS DTS Dolby Digital EX

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

For the days of shooting in Cartagena, Giovanna Mezzogiorno was given an entire beautiful old house to live in. One night, she heard some strange noises behind a closet and thought it was a ghost. When help arrived and investigated, they encountered with an owl's nest. Two owls were found and later named after the main characters of the movie, Florentino and Fermina.

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Goofs

When Dr. Juvenal Urbino visits Florentino Ariza he asks him what kind of music Ariza likes. "The music of Carlos Gardel", Ariza answers. The time of the action is somewhere between 1890 and 1895. Gardel was born between (the date is not confirmed) 1883 and 1897. So, he was just a kid at that time, and he couldn't be known at all as the famous singer that died in a plane crash in Medellin (Colombia) in 1935, at the age of 48 or 52.

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Quotes

Fermina Urbino: The only thing that hurts me is that I don't have enough strength to give you the beating that you deserve for being so insolent and evil-minded. But you will leave this house right now and I swear to you on my mother's grave that you will not set foot in it again as long as I live. Life crippled that poor man 50 years ago, because he was too young and now you want to do it because we are too old.

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Connections

Referenced in In Plain Sight: Love in the Time of Colorado (2011)

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Soundtracks

"Toccata from Symphony No 5 in F Op. 42 No 1"
Written by Charles Marie Widor
Performed by Philip Ledger (as Phillip Ledger)
Published by kind permission of Editions Hamelle/Alphonse Leduc, Paris and United Music Publishers Ltd,
England
Track (p) 1992, licensed by kind permission Naxos Rights Itnernational Ltd

User Reviews

Eggs, Planting

I think it is possible to make a film that has this book's richnesses, story, metaphors and style. But it would have to depart as much from ordinary Masterpiece TeeVee as this cleaves to it.

The book, if you do not know it, relies on an already deep tradition of Spanish-speaking writers that brings metaphor to life by mixing illusion and reality. This is a third generation writer in this tradition, and he counts on you knowing the previous generations so that you can appreciate the subtle craft in placing both in a "reality."

The centerpiece of course is how to fabricate a perfect love, suspend it in earnest imagination and make it real through writing. That last bit is the third generation bit, the idea that the writing of illusion makes it real. Students of narrative folding as a device to engage will recognize this trick as one designed to put the reader in the story. Everyone in the story is a "reader" of what Florentino writes. His passion in writing is immediately accessible to every other woman he meets and allows him to enter 622 of them.

That number of course is the number of menstrual cycles he waits for his love while engaged in maintaining the passion. This links to one of the two main metaphors, also partly illusory: the boats on the river. The other metaphor is love as a disease and the triangle established by the doctor dedicated to eradicate it. The structure is rather clinical, made attractive by the same passion in its writer as the writer character has. It matters that it is written in Spanish, a language that allows a connected flow of phrases and a tradition that assumes romantic fever.

I think Ruiz could have done this.

Newell has no idea what to do with this, and is left with simply trying lush shots and reading passionate text.

Here's an indication of his general ignorance: for practical commercial reasons the language must be English. But instead of having his characters speak English naturally and with passion, he has them adopt an accent which we will recognize as Hispanic speaking English as a second language. This is characterized by hypervigilance to the consonants separating words where the primary language centers of the brain are telling the speaker that they should flow with sonances. An astute listener (and if you are not, you do not deserve to have passion in reading) will know people with this, whose words flow in their mind, but become discrete pebbles in the mouth, breaking the flow of liquid life this whole story exploits.

Here's an indication of his cinematic ignorance: It matters what is shown, how and in what way, for how long and in what order. He films this as if every element that plays a role in the plot deserves equal weight. Thus, if we have a telegraph key that does something, or a boat people are on, or a ladder that slips, why we see those. All exist with equal weight. All are shown with the same reality and perspective. All have the same frame. But this manner of narrative is all about color and weight, all about the rhythms of love in reality. Some things should be sharp, magnetic, bright. Others foggy or not even touched. Some seemingly full and sensual but allowed to be discovered not so in a way that never informs the next lust.

Its all about rivers and inconsistent flows. All the sex is denoted by displayed breasts. This again is a commercial necessity, but the material is vaginal in focus. Such intense mysteries must always be. All of the mechanics of the story begin and end there, even in mention of the food.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.