Love in the Time of Cholera

The famed 1985 magical realist novel of Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez gets an ambitious but off-key cinematic adaptation that trips up except in the casting of Javier Bardem as its romantically enthusiastic protagonist. British director Mike Newell ("Four Weddings and a Funeral") works from a script by Ronald Harwood ("The Pianist") to tell the epochal story of Florentino Ariza, a young poet living in turn-of-the-century Cartagena, Columbia who falls hopelessly in love with a girl named Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). Fermina’s protective father (John Leguizamo) facilitates her rushed marriage to Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt), a European-educated aristocrat, thereby dooming Florentino to swear a lasting love that waits busily for the doctor’s death in order to reclaim his true love. But when the momentous event finally occurs some 51 years later, Fermina takes torrential offense at Florentino’s vulgar attempt at cashing in on his vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love. "Don't show your face again for the years of life that are left to you; I hope there are very few of them." Fermina’s hostile rebuke sets off the film’s flashback progression that eventually makes some sense of the its grotesque title.

Rated R, 138 mins. (C+) (Two Stars)