The stiffly titled Love in the Time of Cholera will likely turn people off because of its title (sorry, Gabriel García Márquez, but it’s true), as will the fact that the film is a period piece. But don’t let either fool you – Cholera is lively, funny and very entertaining. But whether the film is legitimately good depends to a substantial extent on one key question: Is everybody in on the joke?
The joke is that Cholera is a mockery of the melodramatic love stories it emulates – it’s like a Spanish soap opera on Telemundo, but more intense. Add to this formula perpetually bright, pleasant visuals and a cast that mostly winks at the audience, and viewers are left wondering whether the film is meant to be as satirical as it seems.
The film centers on the lifelong obsession Florentino (Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men) has for the lover who spurned him, Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Notturno Bus). To try to get over his love for Fermina, Florentino sleeps with literally hundreds of women (his continuing tally is a running joke in the film). In one of the first scenes, we see an elderly Florentino lying in bed with a beautiful young woman with her breasts exposed, urging him to “Lay down, let’s do it again.” After rejecting Florentino, Fermina marries the dapper Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt, The Great Raid), but Florentino still spends all of his life trying to win her back.
Adapted from Márquez’s novel – which was a serious romance, quite unlike the sunny quality director Mike Newell brings to the film – the film revels in extreme melodrama thanks to screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Florentino doesn’t just write long love letters and poems; he writes love letters all night, and even at his job, his business memos are overly tender and in rhyme.
Like Newell, it seems most of the cast has also decided not to take the material seriously. Particularly over-the-top is John Leguizamo (The Take) as Fermina’s disapproving father Lorenzo: He literally gets spitting mad in one scene and chomps a cigar with extreme menace in another. But Leguizamo is just the most obvious example – numerous supporting players seem to be conducting a satire as well. This would be less jarring if not for Bardem and Bratt, who give genuine performances that feel grounded and real.
Bardem is going to win an Oscar before long; with this film and No Country for Old Men, he shows his tremendous range. So quietly terrifying with his bass grumble in Country, Bardem is all sweetness here. Tremendously gentle and sensitive, his face is often a picture of innocence and he speaks softly and kindly to just about everyone.
Bratt also attempts to give a real performance of elegant nobility as the dignified, smooth Urbino. He’s just as professional and precise at checking for cholera as he is at wooing women.
The film is tremendously funny, but that is both its strength and flaw. Because Cholera is so funny, it entertains for its entire runtime. But because a lot of the humor comes from how exaggerated the film is, it’s hard to take the epic love story as anything more than an extreme telenovela.
Taking Cholera seriously is harder still because Florentino’s object of affection doesn’t seem so attractive. In the book and film, Fermina rejects Florentino and then takes Urbino for granted, only showing up to complain. By the end of the film, you actually start to resent her for not appreciating Florentino, and the situation isn’t helped by Mezzogiorno’s fidgety, unsatisfactory performance.
Is the film a funny satire of romantic melodrama, or an accidental comedy intended to be a romantic melodrama? It isn’t totally clear, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Cholera is so funny, the film is enjoyable either way.
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RATING: 3.5 STARS OUT OF 5
