I apologise, we feel bad, but there's no trailer available. ~Ed.
It really does defy belief how someone could take a gorgeous love story and turn it into a farce of a film. The result here is laughable, but I do not imagine that this is what the director had in mind.
The film spans a fifty year period set in an unnamed Caribbean port during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem) marinates in his unrequited love for Fermina Urbino (Giovanna Mezzogorno) throughout the course of the film but she steadfastly rejects him by marrying the dashing Dr Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt). This idea of a love suspended between times or a love without time limits is a prominent theme of the novel – but is somewhat lost in the haze of generational confusion that permeates the film.
While in the novel Florentino’s longing and undying love for Fermina is endearing, in the film it becomes stalker-like and in modern times a restraining order would be just around the corner. His desperation becomes painful to watch, and his conquests of random women in an attempt to ease his sorrow do nothing to help the viewer to empathise with him. Javier Bardem is a skilled and complex actor, as evidenced in his work in Before Nights Falls and No Country for Old Men, but he fails to showcase his skills in this production with an unwavering limp backbone.
The casting director made a glaring blunder with the central female lead, as the young Fermina is too old and the old Fermina looks too young. The appalling attempts at ageing make-up, the bad wigs, facial hair and ill fitting garments make for an art department disaster.
It seems as though director Mike Newell was unable to harness the poetic and playful nature of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel. The subtleties and humor of the original work seem to have eluded him, and instead he has attempted to portray an epic and worthy love story without the passion. Perhaps the only saving graces (if any) were the languorous camera work drifting over the lush Columbian scenery and the snappy soundtrack provided by Shakira.
While the novel is layered, detailed and sumptuous in its narrative style and in its evocations of the heart, the film falls well short of any such depth, and left me feeling like I has witnessed nothing more than a very expensive high school drama production. It was not a case of eternal love examined, but rather of an eternal bore endured.
By Philippa Rennie, Flicks.co.nz
Florintino Ariza has a skill with words, but finds he also finds women fit within his skill set when he is rejected by his first love. Keeping a record of a his conquests as he progresses though life becomes an obsession until in his 70's things take the turn he had wanted so long ago.
a very strong hand in the editing room and some script may have taken this movie from excruciable to irritating
for some it will fill with pleasure. I guess a bit like reading a Mills and Boone novel! The Flicks review below adequately outlines the story, though maybe is a little heavy-handed in it's dismissiveness.
1/2 Small wonder that One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's best novel, has never been filmed. Watching "Love in the Time of Cholera," based on another of his great works, made me wonder if he is even translatable into cinema. Gabo's work may really live only there on the page, with his lighthearted badinage between the erotic and the absurd, the tragic and the magical. If you extract the story without the language, you are left with dust and bones but no beating heart.
1/2 A complex novel is remade as a superficial historic romance, with no feelings of love or loss evident anywhere. Bardem and Mezzogiorno do their best to generate heat but lack any spark. Fans of the book prepare to be disappointed.
Is love a disease, as Marquez possibly wanted us to believe? Maybe, but in the case of this adaptation, it’s more of a laughing sickness.
Lovely, but lacks the poetry and magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' book.
A quirky, charming unconventional love story.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 20th Mar 2008.
Release date: March 20th 2008.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
