Review of Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) by Chads. — 05 Feb 2008
"Love in the Time of Cholera" flunks its litmus test. Audiences aren't supposed to laugh when Florentino(Javier Bardem) tells Fermina(Giovanna Mezzogiorno), in all seriousness, that he'd been saving himself for her.
Even though Florentino got lucky more times than the alpha male in a tribe of black howler monkeys, those women(622 to be precise, but who's counting? Florentino, apparently, that's who.) were encounters that, albeit fun, left him unfulfilled and lonely.
It's not a lie exactly, but it sounds like one, when in fact, Florentino's pillow talk is supposed to be a declaration of love, and that's the major reason why "Love in the Time of Cholera" tickles our funny bones instead of touching our hearts.
Florentino is supposed to be tortured. Each woman he beds is not Fermina, but he doesn't seem sufficiently tortured. Maybe the film needed more cholera; more dead people. Sex, then death; sex, then death.
You never feel the spectre of cholera hovering over the characters in this movie like you do in the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Ultimately, you don't get the sense that Florentino's life was all that horrible.
He got some. He didn't get cholera.
This review of Love in the Time of Cholera (2007) was written by Chads. on 05 Feb 2008.
Love in the Time of Cholera has generally received mixed reviews.
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