Love in the Time of Cholera

Vaidehi Shah | vaidehi86@gmail.com
the ridge transmedia
A NUSSU Publication

 

Picture credit: www.loveinthetime.com

For Florentino Ariza, love is a state of grace. For his mistress Sara Noriega, love is simply everything that is done naked – “spiritual love from the waist up, physical love from the waist down.” From the sublime to the primal, love is expressed in all its forms in Mike Newell’s print-to-screen adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.

Set in Cartagena, Colombia, the film narrates the tale of the love triangle between Florentino Ariza (Javier Bardem), Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) and Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt). A young apprentice in a post office, Florentino encounters the radiant Fermina while delivering a telegram – and begins an epistolary relationship with her. It ends, however, when Fermina returns from a trip to the country and leaves him, saying that the relationship was just an illusion. She enters a blissful marriage with the accomplished Dr. Urbino soon thereafter.

Picture credit: www.loveinthetime.com

Meanwhile, Florentino spends his days pining for Fermina. His initial plan of saving himself for her gradually morphs into a series of 622 affairs to numb the pain of unrequited love. Decades later, Urbino’s death brings Florentino back to Fermina’s doorstep with a renewed ardour. Their rekindled love culminates in an endless cruise down the Magdalena River, quarantined from the judgemental gaze of society on the pretext of a cholera outbreak onboard the aptly christened New Fidelity.

Aesthetically, the film is superb. With loving attention to detail and brilliant cinematography, Newell recreates the charm and ethos of the Caribbean beautifully. Shakira’s lilting melodies float lightly but poignantly over the film’s narrative and her Golden Globe nomination for best original song is truly well deserved.

Picture credit: www.loveinthetime.com

However, one cannot help but feel a twinge of disenchantment at Newell’s treatment of the classic. I blame this squarely on the film’s use of English rather than Spanish. Juxtaposed with the wonderful recreation of 1900s Cartagena, watching the actors speak in stiff, accented English is counter-intuitive, disorienting and ultimately, unconvincing. Also, Bardem’s Ariza starts out as Petrarchian and pathetic and over the course of his 622 affairs, appears increasingly sleazy. By the time he and Fermina reunite, he retains none of the sympathy or fascination that he does in the book. The film is a little too weak to stand as art in its own right, but is an enjoyable complement to a brilliant novel.

Picture credit: www.loveinthetime.com

Nevertheless, Love in the Time of Cholera is an artful insight into what love and sex really mean. For Florentino, sex is the antidote to the pain of love. For Sara Noriega, sex is love. For Florentino’s father, there is no greater glory than to die for love. But as Marquez and Newell show, love and glory rarely coexist. Love is not always blissful, either – it has the same symptoms as cholera, as a smitten Florentino retches himself empty writing to Fermina. And at the close of the story, we see love nestled between the naked lovers, in their seventies, and know that love doesn’t have to be dignified or glamorous or sexy – it is quiet and real, and whether or not it is known or reciprocated, it is limitless.