Love in the Time of Cholera
by Mike Newell
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DVD details
Actor: Benjamin Bratt, Gina Bernard Forbes, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Javier Bardem, Marcela MarDirector: Mike Newell
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Andrew Molasky
Producer: Brantley M. Dunaway
Producer: Chris Law
Producer: Danny Greenspun
Producer: Dylan Russell
Writer: Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez
Writer: Ronald Harwood
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 139 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- Based on the bestselling novel by Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, comes an epic love story that spans a lifetime, set against the breathtaking backdrop of South America during the turn of the century. When a teenage Florentino Ariza sees Fermina Daza for the first time, a spark of youthful infatuation ignites a romance that will carry the two from intoxicating highs to desperat
DVD Reviews of Love in the Time of Cholera
DVD Review: GREAT MOVIE - MUST SEE
Summary: 5 Stars
This is definitely a "date" movie, not for children. You must see this movie, it will make you laugh, cry, and just feel good. Great settings, beautiful costuming, one of a kind.DVD Review: Superb Movie Adaptation
Summary: 5 Stars
Love in a Time of Cholera / B0011FLH14
A long-time fan of Gabriel Marquez's deeply symbolic novel of love in all its many and varied forms, I was deeply surprised at the lukewarm reception this powerful film has received. I wonder, perhaps, if there is a reason why so many great novels shall never make it to the silver screen - so much content simply has to be cut to fit a coherent movie into a shortened time block, that inevitably fans will be upset that some favorite scene or character was not included. And yet I felt that this movie adaptation superbly captured the feel and story of Marquez's masterpiece.
A particular word must be said about the casting, which is quite wonderful. All the actors play their roles exceptionally well, especially the roles of Fermina and Florentino. Florentino does a gracious job with the difficult and demanding role - equal parts 'devoted' lover (devoted in his heart, but never with his body), clever seducer, and yet suffering from an intensely broken heart. Fermina, too, has the unenviable task of remaining sympathetic whilst playing a distant and aloof lady who breaks one lover's heart and marries another whom she does not, initially, care much for. The struggle of the two lovers, as they cope to live their lives buffeted by the deep passions within their relationship is quite realistic, and never feels forced for the sake of plot or pacing.
Moral guardians will, of course, take umbrage at the level of nudity in this movie - and often 'unsexy' nudity at that! Yet that is the world that Marquez attempted to portray - a *real* world, where people have sex naked, and their bodies are not all oiled statues of unreal, air-brushed beauty. Nor does the director shy away from Marquez's insistence that aged romance is as passionate and valid as youthful ones - and aged nudity is on display respectfully, not as something automatically disgusting or inherently titillating as Fermina's daughter would suggest. Humanity is portrayed here, and humor, as well - as when Florentino is interrupted at his place of business and his visitor assures the lady to have no qualms about continuing in his absense, as he has not glimpsed the lady's face! Or the heartwarming, illiterate couple who woos one another through Florentino's love letter writing services.
At the end of the day, no movie can hope to fully encapsulate an epic novel of this length and complexity, but I feel that this movie comes as close as possible and hits the mark beautifully, and for that I am grateful.
~ Ana Mardoll
DVD Review: 'Gabo' Casts an Irreversible Spell in 'Cholera'
Summary: 3 Stars
Part epistolary romance, part case study of a furtive and nerdy Casanova, Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del c?lera) reveals a male protagonist's optimistic and cynical perspectives of love. Portrayed with eloquence, charm and emotional complexity by Javier Bardem - who comes from a long line of thespians in Spain - Florentino Ariza surveys love's progression as an incurable disease. Hence, the cleverness of the film's title, for cholera during the periods depicted in Love in the Time of Cholera brought death quickly whereas love festers indefinitely.
In one of the most poignant moments of the 2007 film, a middle-aged Florentino utters to his dementia-ravaged mother: "You confuse cholera with love." Florentino's longing for the beautiful Fermina Daza was so intense, that his mother believed cholera to be the blame for his frequent bouts of vomiting and melancholia. That Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez, author of the 1985 novel El amor en los tiempos del c?lera, upon which the epic film is based, likens love to a terminal disease is an apt comparison. Such a romantic concept reverberated (with no small debt to John Barry's sweeping score) throughout Jeannot Szwarc's 1980 film Somewhere in Time, adapted unfaithfully from the 1975 novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson. In Somewhere in Time, a playwright (portrayed by Christopher Reeve) is described as having "died of love" after obsessing over a photo portrait of Belle Epoque actress Elise McKenna (portrayed by Jane Seymour) and willing himself back to her time in order to meet and fall in love with her.
In both films - Love in the Time of Cholera and Somewhere in Time - the viewer is challenged to redefine time beyond a cold, scientific certainty and to explore the interrelatedness of memories, emotions and metaphysics. Without relying on the special effects that action, sci-fi and horror flicks have conditioned our minds to accept as a requisite for magical occurrences, "Gabo" - as Garc?a M?rquez is affectionately known in Latin America - asks us only to open the four chambers of our hearts, figuratively speaking. He implores us to feel the love (Lion King reference unintentional) that makes life worth living despite the social and economic chaos that often surrounds and threatens to desensitize us.
Love is the unseen but omniscient character in Love in the Time of Cholera, Somewhere in Time and another period film: Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) from director Alfonso Arau and adapted from the same-titled novel by Laura Esquivel. Esquivel's story is enchanting because it shouts from the rooftops that love holds the power to heal the wounded hearts of distanced lovers - whether the pair is separated by geography, disapproving parents, envious third parties, or any combination thereof. In fact, in Como agua para chocolate, when forbidden lovers Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi) finally come together, Marco's voice booms: "TE AMO!" What follows in the barn is a literal combustion. Well, the fact that Tita had swallowed nearly an entire box of matches prior to their consummation was an eerie clue.
Another dose of "magical realism" - an artistic technique first recognized in American visual art of the mid-20th century and later employed in progressive literature by Latin American writers in the '60s and '70s - that transferred well from Esquivel's story to Arau's picture was the series of haunting sequences which result from Tita psychologically battling her destiny. Tita's fate may have been to become a spinster, but with Pedro's sensual aid she finds her way. As the youngest daughter, she is fated to take care of her widowed mother, Mam? Elena (Regina Torn?), until her death. But when Tita reciprocates Pedro's flirtation to the point of infusing eroticism into the scrumptious dishes that she prepares for the family (which expands after her sister Rosaura's marriage to Pedro), a curse about which Mam? Elena warned is cast.
Speaking of Como agua para chocolate, much in the way Pedro professes "amor" from the top of his lungs in that torrid barn scene mentioned earlier in this review, hoodlum-Romeo Antone a/k/a "Tony" (Richard Beymer) in West Side Story painfully shouts his beloved's name, "MARIA!" on an urban street. In the first half of West Side Story, however, Tony envisions only love's promise, not its sometimes tragic consequences. The agonizing truth of the controversial affair between Tony and Mar?a (Natalie Wood) comes across as brutally honest as an admission in a long-avoided confessional booth when the youths perform "Somewhere." And Mar?a's divinity, in Tony's eyes, rings as true as a cathedral bell when his dubbed voice sings the ballad "Mar?a": "The most beautiful sound I've ever heard, Mar?a, Mar?a, Mar?a ... Say it loud and there's music playing. Say it soft and it's almost like praying."
Holiness takes a holiday in the motives of Florentino, however. Though he frequently refers to Fermina as his "crowned goddess" to anyone willing to listen, he indulges in "mucho" carnality throughout Love in the Time of Cholera. He is deliberate in going about a purely sexual catharsis in order to alleviate emotional pain caused by Fermina's rejection. When he first spoke of his love for her, Fermina felt honored, but after a while, enough is enough!
The rape of Florentino (in his 20s, presumably) is presented by director Mike Newell and screenwriter Ronald Harwood as a misogynistic justification for Florentino's debauchery. After Florentino beds down (with desks, walls and leafy forests sometimes replacing mattresses as props) more than 600 women well into his 70s, he loses the viewers' sympathy with the abruptness of a Victrola's needle skidding across a vinyl record.
A second chance at love often requires much suffering on the part of the one whom love was denied. In that sense of murky optimism, Love in the Time of Cholera elevates love to the most sublime affliction. "Gabo" probably would agree with that diagnosis.
DVD Review: Latin love
Summary: 4 Stars
I had some trouble with the book. The rich descriptions and time changes were wonderful but did confuse a trifle. So, I purchased this DVD, watched it and went back to the book and enjoyed it far more. The movie is well made and manages to follow the story line reasonably well. The acting is of a very high standard and the scenes do credit to the film makers---follow the authors descriptions quite well.DVD Review: Made my day
Summary: 5 Stars
I received the product in the good shape promised, in the time promised and it was well packaged.
Description of Love in the Time of Cholera
Based on the bestselling novel by Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, comes an epic love story that spans a lifetime, set against the breathtaking backdrop of South America during the turn of the century. When a teenage Florentino Ariza sees Fermina Daza for the first time, a spark of youthful infatuation ignites a romance that will carry the two from intoxicating highs to desperate lows over the next 50 years, in the film that dares to ask; How long would you wait for love?There's no reason an Englishman shouldn't take on a landmark in Latin American literature. Four Weddings and a Funeral, after all, proves Mike Newell has a feel for romance. Adapted by The Pianist's Ronald Harwood, Love in the Time of Cholera is an epic vision of true love. For all the talent involved, however, this lush realization of the Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez novel never takes flight. Newell begins with a death before backtracking 50 year to the late-1800s, with Florentino (Unax Ugalde), a poetry-writing telegraph operator living in an unnamed city (the movie was filmed in Cartagena, Columbia) who spots the graceful Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) while making his rounds, and that's it--he's in love. While Florentino's mother (Central Station's Fernanda Montenegro) encourages the courtship, Fermina's father (John Leguizamo in over-the-top mode) forbids it. Years pass, and the well-born Dr. Urbino (Benjamin Bratt) treats Fermina for a case of cholera. Then, Urbino proposes. Fermina accepts. A distraught Florentino (now played by Javier Bardem) decides to wait. With the help of his uncle (a sprightly Hector Elizondo), he amasses wealth of his own. All the while, he drifts from woman to woman. After five decades of waiting, he gets a second chance to win Fermina's heart, and it's easier said than done. Florentino's journey is absorbing, but Newell's film lacks the passion and complexity of Marquez's prose. The actors give it their all, but Love in the Time of Cholera is more of a pleasant diversion than a life-changing experience. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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