Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/scope 138m
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Hector Elizondo
Synopsis:
A lowly telegraph clerk in late nineteenth century Cartagena falls in love with the daughter of a merchant of altogether grander ambitions. She marries a doctor, but he nurses his passion through the years and literally hundreds of casual sexual encounters until she is free again.
Review:
The sex is toned down a bit for the film, which would otherwise risk tipping into titillation, though it does come close to 'romp' at one or two points. All the same it is a long haul in which not much that is terribly dramatic happens, save a rapidly forgotten throat-slitting of one of his conquests by her possessive husband - a forgivable failing in a narrative spanning more than fifty years. It is hard to believe that this ghost/mouse of a man would prove irresistible to so many women, or indeed that Fermina would fall in and out of love with him so quickly in the first place, all the more so since a passable similarity to Bardem has necessitated some unfortunate nose prosthetics on the features of the young actor initially required to play the hero. Like Chronicle of a Death Foretold, this is an old man's film in both theme and pacing, and an unlikely subject for adaptation.
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/scope 138m
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Hector Elizondo
Synopsis:
A lowly telegraph clerk in late nineteenth century Cartagena falls in love with the daughter of a merchant of altogether grander ambitions. She marries a doctor, but he nurses his passion through the years and literally hundreds of casual sexual encounters until she is free again.
Review:
The sex is toned down a bit for the film, which would otherwise risk tipping into titillation, though it does come close to 'romp' at one or two points. All the same it is a long haul in which not much that is terribly dramatic happens, save a rapidly forgotten throat-slitting of one of his conquests by her possessive husband - a forgivable failing in a narrative spanning more than fifty years. It is hard to believe that this ghost/mouse of a man would prove irresistible to so many women, or indeed that Fermina would fall in and out of love with him so quickly in the first place, all the more so since a passable similarity to Bardem has necessitated some unfortunate nose prosthetics on the features of the young actor initially required to play the hero. Like Chronicle of a Death Foretold, this is an old man's film in both theme and pacing, and an unlikely subject for adaptation.
Country: US
Technical: DeLuxe/scope 138m
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, Hector Elizondo
Synopsis:
A lowly telegraph clerk in late nineteenth century Cartagena falls in love with the daughter of a merchant of altogether grander ambitions. She marries a doctor, but he nurses his passion through the years and literally hundreds of casual sexual encounters until she is free again.
Review:
The sex is toned down a bit for the film, which would otherwise risk tipping into titillation, though it does come close to 'romp' at one or two points. All the same it is a long haul in which not much that is terribly dramatic happens, save a rapidly forgotten throat-slitting of one of his conquests by her possessive husband - a forgivable failing in a narrative spanning more than fifty years. It is hard to believe that this ghost/mouse of a man would prove irresistible to so many women, or indeed that Fermina would fall in and out of love with him so quickly in the first place, all the more so since a passable similarity to Bardem has necessitated some unfortunate nose prosthetics on the features of the young actor initially required to play the hero. Like Chronicle of a Death Foretold, this is an old man's film in both theme and pacing, and an unlikely subject for adaptation.