The Screening Room

Director Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) had it rough bringing Garcia Marquez's book to the screen. It is not movie friendly, being short on dialogue and action and long on passages of inner contemplation. What Newell and Harwood came up with is a story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl to rich doctor, boy spends 50 years stalking girl and engaging in meaningless sex until doctor falls off a ladder and dies, allowing boy to get girl back.

The setting is South America. There's a plague going on. This doesn't seem to bother the principal players much. Young telegram boy Florentino (Unax Ugalde) catches the eye of the sheltered Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), probably due to that giant prosthetic nose he's wearing (the better to look like Javier Bardem, who plays the character later on). Fermina's dad (John Leguizamo) busts up the budding romance, sending Fermina to the country to sulk in a hot tub. Florentino sulks, too, taking up residence with his mama (Fernanda Montenegro) and pretty much making a nuisance of himself as he obsesses over Fermina. Dressed in a bowler hat, black suit and bowtie for his prowls through the city, Mr. Bardem comes across as a stalker disguised as Charlie Chaplin. Benjamin Bratt enters the movie as a doctor who woos and wins Fermina. Mr. Bratt gets a weird costume, too. Dressed in a white suit and top hat for his wedding trip, he looks like he's wearing the cake. (Mr. Bratt and Ms. Mezzogiorno's honeymoon night might be the movie's most snicker-worthy scene.)

A great deal of time passes. We know this because the stars are given increasingly thick layers of old-age makeup. (Not helping matters is the fact that they seem to age at different rates.) Florentino is forced to break his vow of celibacy. He reacts by turning into a belt-notcher extraordinaire, helped along by his mama, who is going mad. We know this because, thanks again to the makeup department, she wears more rouge than any sane person would wear. The doctor finally falls off the ladder, bringing the long-separated lovebirds together for a tryst on a boat. The filmmakers unfortunately have made this scene explicit; Ms. Mezzogiorno seems to have been given a prosthetic old-age body to wear. They shouldn't have gone to the trouble. Really, they shouldn't have.

Javier Bardem almost comes away with the worst acting performance, being unconvincing as a lovesick twentysomething and later as a bespectacled, balding, arthritic sixtysomething chick magnet. (Did cholera wipe out all the other men in South America?) Javier, however, is overshadowed by John Leguizamo as the girl's overprotective father. Leguizamo snarls, flashes his eyes and spits out his dialogue with a Queens accent, despite the South American setting. He even gives his mustache a twirl. He's Snidely Whiplash with mob connections. Worst makeup goes to Hector Elizondo. His role is small but a memorable thanks to a very bushy, shoulder length wig that seems to migrate from his head to his lower face as the film progresses. It's so jolting, it's as if a new character's been introduced.

Sometimes it's fun to laugh in all the wrong places. Love in the Time of Cholera provides that kind of fun.