What a shame!
Here is a film, based on one of the most celebrated literary love stories ever written, that trips all over itself on its way to mediocrity. It takes profound source material and seems to cram it together with bizarre shifts in tone, an utter lack of focus and a screenplay that cannot convey the magnitude of this unrequited tale of everlasting love.
Innumerable bad decisions have to be laid at the feet of director, Mike Newell, who turns “Love in the Time of Cholera” into a fluffy melodrama replete with poor performances and dialogue that evokes more eye-rolling than tears. This is one of the most disappointing let-downs of 2007.
It is a simple story really — a man falls in love and pledges his unwavering fidelity to a woman. He proposes and she accepts. However, the woman’s father has loftier plans for his daughter than a penniless poet. The couple trade telegrams from afar. Years pass. However, when they meet again, she is convinced that her feelings were an illusion. She marries another man — a doctor. He moves on with his life, hiding the pain by sleeping with other women. He awaits the death of her new husband before he makes his move again. But decades will pass.
It is one of those “simple stories” that has ample opportunity to follow complicated tangents. Those tangents require time and patience — perhaps only available in a novel or a mini-series. A two-hour motion picture is too confined a space to make us care or comprehend the enormity of these people’s complex emotions.
There are a few positives to the production that I would be remiss without mentioning. Giovanna Mezzogiorno is my favorite actress of all time. I’ve never seen anyone on the big screen as compelling with every glance as she. I simply cannot take my eyes off the lovely Italian actress. I’ve seen her in about half-a-dozen films and she has been superb in all of them.
Javier Bardem is also tremendous… although he is weighed down by some awful lines. Somehow, though, he manages to stay afloat in rough waters. Benjamin Bratt is also a pleasant surprise as the “other man”. Unfortunately, the remainder of the supporting roles range from forgettable to remarkably poor.
I also had admiration for the score and the cinematography, both of which befit an Oscar-baiting period piece.
However, the entire film crumbles under the weight of a corny screenplay, some laughably odd scenes whose tones would feel more at home in a screwball comedy, and a truncated running time that cannot hold the emotional profundity of the novel. “Love in the Time of Cholera” is an overly ambitious mess.
