Movie review: "Love in the Time of Cholera"

To say that "Love in the Time of Cholera" is a chick flick would be wrong, but in its own quirky way, it is intensely romantic.

Trying to conjure a moving picture out of feverish love letters and the 50-year journey of mending hearts is not an easy exercise; however, Mike Newell has directed a sumptuous tale of love, romance and good old-fashioned sex.

The movie is based on Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1985 novel of the same name, a classic among Spanish-speaking readers before being translated into various languages. Now, more than 20 years later, Oprah Winfrey made it the selection of her Oprah's Book Club, which includes millions of women in the country. This film will certainly appeal mostly to women older than 30, although they're not exactly an audience who rushes out to see movies in theaters.

Despite an amazing cast, there really isn't one single actor that might sell this movie or get people into theaters, which is why the strength of the film lies solely in the fact that it's based on such a beloved literary classic. "Love in the Time of Cholera" is a take on love and longing in late 19th- and early 20th-century South America.

Javier Bardem plays Florentino, a romantic who waits more than half a century for his beloved, Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). He waits for her husband (Benjamin Bratt) to die. He waits for her to love him again, as she did when they were young. And as he waits, he has sex with 622 women -- he keeps a diary of all his conquests -- which does not distract from his love of Fermina.

Is Fermina worth the wait? Is anyone? Therein lies the tale.

Florentino is truly heartbroken at losing Fermina -- he suffers from love as one might suffer from disease (cholera, perhaps). Fermina's father, a mule trader (John Leguizamo, humorously menacing in a small role), not only forbids Florentino from seeing his daughter, he whisks her away to the country. When Florentino finally sees her, she rejects him, so he pines, aimlessly waiting for Fermina to come back to him.

Until, that is, he discovers sex. To him, he's not cheating on Fermina, who has married Dr. Juvenal Urbino. In his mind, he's simply using the pleasures of physical love to sooth his wounded heart, although over half a century, that's an awful lot of soothing.

We bounce back and forth between two lives, with Florentino improving his station, thanks to the help of a crazy old uncle (a nearly unrecognizable Hector Elizondo) with a thing for singing at funerals.

Urbino and Fermina make their relationship work, but it is more a marriage of duty than love -- stability, Urbino tells her, is more important in marriage than happiness.

What's really missing is a sense of rapture -- a touch of magic on this course through the decades. For all the talk of love as a "state of grace" -- for all the beautiful music, beautiful costumes, beautiful actors, beautiful settings -- Newell's film lacks the beating heart of a true sense of love.

Only in the final reel does it spring to life.

By then, Florentino has morphed into an old man, and Bardem is there to portray him: wispy and hobbled.

What really drives the film besides Bardem's performance is the excellent script by Ron Harwood ("The Pianist"), one that features beautiful narrative passages and dialogue that can be appreciated by those who enjoy literary writing.

This is a film that will mostly appeal to hopeless romantics, especially those who can understand and appreciate Florentino's plight -- if you could really call sleeping with more than 600 women a "plight." That selective group should not have problems forgiving some of the foibles and faux pas made in the telling of the story.