Love in the Time of Cholera is the story of one man’s pledge of love and fidelity to a woman who initially accepts his proclamation of love only to reject it and hold herself apart from him for 50 years. Based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera features Javier Bardem as lovestruck Florentino Ariza, the man who carries a torch for Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) for half a century. Benjamin Bratt co-stars as Juvenal Urbino, the handsome doctor who weds Fermina after she spurns Florentino’s advances.
The film takes place over six decades and director Mike Newell chose to begin his movie with his lead actors in old age makeup because that’s the way Marquez began his book. “The novel was always a guide for us,” explained Newell. “Marquez was very generous about it and said, 'I think you feel too respectful towards the novel.' This is in the scripting stage. When he saw the movie, he didn’t feel like that at all. He thought the movie was great, which I can't tell you what a good feeling that is for us because we don't have to sit in front of guys like you and duck and weave because we know that he didn't like it. He did like it, so no ducking and weaving."
"But the beginning is outlandish," admitted Newell. "You have a man falling out of a tree because he's bitten by a parrot. You have an old, old, old man in bed with a naked girl of about 17-18. Then extraordinarily enough, you have that old man going to the old woman whose husband just died saying, 'I have loved you for 50 years and I'm now pledging you my heart all over again and would like to marry you.' It's outrageous and outlandish. It's Marquez. He's one of the great writers ever. He has that kind of cheek and gall and surprise. If you don't do that, if you simply let it unroll from young to old, I don't think that you have done that sort of seizing the audience in surprise.”
Newell wouldn’t venture a guess as to whether or not fans of Marquez’ work will equally enjoy the film version of Love in the Time of Cholera. “I can't tell you that,” said Newell. “I'm satisfied with the movie because I think that what the movie does - because what the book says is that Fermina is all her life a great beauty and she's timid. She's not sure whether she's lived her life. ‘Did I really love him? He was a good man but did I really, really love him?’ She thinks that all the way along, all the way through. She gets married for the wrong reasons. She has a stressed relationship with him and yet at the end, she can perfectly honestly say that it was a good marriage. It was a good marriage. It's just there were stresses in it.”
“But she's timid and Florentino isn't timid at all,” added Newell. “Florentino is wild and brave and crazy, and loves her to distraction all his life - and has 622 other lovers. In the end, what the book says is now is now. ‘I know we're 70. We're old people. We might die tomorrow. Marry me now and at least we'll get 24 hours.’ So the book is a great heroic…as well as everything else, as well as how delicate and subtle and careful and well observed it is…it's a great heroic affirmation of life, of positiveness, of belief and doing things. That we got. If we got that, we've got a version of Marquez. How could we ever be literal? If we were going to be literal, I would need 16 hours of television to do it. What we do have is a film that sees what the book is about and does that. Sure, there were things that killed me to leave out.”
One of the things Newell hated to lose but had to for the film adaptation was the very first chapter of Marquez’ book. “I loved the very first chapter,” said Newell. “I loved this silver-haired old bullsh---er coming into the room and saying, 'Don't worry, it's suicide, clearly suicide but the police don't have to know that and we'll do this, that and the other.' Then there is this fantastic image of him opening his medical bag and inside his medical bag is chaos. The chaos is his life. He looks so great from the outside, Juvenal, and the bag which is literally his impedimenta. Those enormous elegances of construction are wonderful. I used to read the book every couple of weeks while we were shooting. I used to read it every couple of weeks for pure pleasure. I would sit down and say, 'Why don't I read up? I'm shooting that in the next couple of days. I'll just check it out of the book.' I would just cruise on through and love it. But the making of a movie is not the writing of a book.”
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Love in the Time of Cholera hits theaters on November 16, 2007 and is rated R for sexual content/nudity and brief language.
