Love In The Time of Cholera

Mike Newell is a skilled director with a diverse portfolio that includes Donnie Brasco (1997), Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994), and Dance With A Stranger (1985). Love in the Time of Cholera expands his range in remarkable yet quite strange ways. Remarkable because as a historical romance it takes him into personally uncharted and challenging territory, strange because as much as it magically transports us to a bygone place and time, the mechanics of its deceptions are glaringly apparent. A large-scale, evidently costly (US$50m) production that has been roundly lambasted critically in both the UK and US, there are more than a few reasons for describing it as the director's Heaven’s Gate.

Visually the film is top drawer, with superb production and costume design flawlessly creating the look of late 19^th century Colombia, the whole shebang seductively lensed by Affonso Beato, who regularly works with Stephen Frears. Adapted by Ronald Harwood (best known for The Pianist, 2002) from the well-known novel by Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel García Márquez, the script is gracefully articulate without being literary. The original score by Antonio Pinto is equally effective. All this is to like about Newell’s film but there are some aspects which estrange.

Of course the producers could not know that Javier Bardem would pick up an Oscar for his effort in No Country For Old Men and financially that must have been a small blessing for them but from our point of view it is difficult not to see echoes of Anton Chigurh in Florentino’s implacably dogged pursuit of his quarry. The goals may been significantly different but their personal styles are not (and Florentino’s body count is considerably higher). Whilst Bardem does “old man” very well and generally gives a touching performance as the stoically persistent Florentino, we are throughout watching Bardem much more than his character (Giovanna Mezzogiorno as the object of his affection is a far less familiar face although also a far less interesting one). This marquee-casting is seemingly not just accidental. Benjamin Bratt is also, despite a convincing performance, an actor whom we are more aware of as a celebrity than for his dramatic skills whilst John Leguizamo, best known for playing Latino street punks, is, in both age and demeanour, mis-cast as Fermina's father. That he simply disappears from the narrative is hardly a loss. And why Liev Schrieber was chosen as Florentino’s boss is anyone’s guess. Given that the visual style of the film is so convincing in its recreation of another world, these points of familiarity seem inexplicably inconsistent,

If these casting choices keep us from fully engaging with the characters what is most peculiar about the film is its near fetishization of the efforts of the make-up department. The story covers a period of more than 50 years and this requires a good deal of cosmetic skill for the proportions of the big screen. Generally it is done very well, with both Bardem and Bratt aging convincingly, however the women (with the exception of the 70 year old Fermina in the final bedroom scene) seem hardly to age at all, receiving little more than a heavy dusting of grey powder. Strangely Newell seems almost obsessional in foregrounding this aspect of the production, pushing the camera into the actor’s faces so that we can scrutinize the efficacy of the work done. Or at least that is the nett effect.

Cholera is very much the plague of the moment, it also being the back-drop for John Curran’s currently screening, The Painted Veil (and in which Liev Schrieber has a much worthier role). Love In The Time of Cholera does not achieve the marvellous balance between the personal and the historical, nor the dramatic intensity of that film but also Marquez is not Maugham. Marquez is very much credited as a pioneer of the “magical realism” school of Latin American literature and there is a good deal more magic than realism in this film (not least in Florentino’s performance as a pantsman). Like Florentino in his pursuit of Fermina, for me at least, for all its faults this film reached its goal by dint of a romantic idealism tempered with a pragmatic wordliness. It will not do so for everyone but more seasoned viewers will find satisfaction enough in this languid story of love triumphant.

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