"Love in the Time of Cholera" Released on DVD

Review by Idalia Martinez

Having never read Gabriel García Márquez, viewing the film version of his book "Love in the Time of Cholera," quickly reveals that the writer ventures outside of family friendly topics. So if you're scouting for popcorn and a film around the tube with the family, this is not the one. However, Sr. Márquez and Mike Newell, director of "Cholera," expand on man's ability to produce family with protagonist Florentino Ariza and his strategic documentation of 693 sexual encounters with nameless women.

The film's storyline weaves the sexual encounters into its cyclical path. The opening act shows a new widow approached by a man professing his devoted love of 51 years, nine months and four days. The film then backtracks to the characters' pasts, and finally returns to introduction and resolution. Between the beginning and end points, rejection from his first and only love, Fermina Daza, is the impetus for Florentino's descriptive on-screen sex ability amidst receding hairlines, aging 75ish body and a period of 51 years, nine months and four days. Sexual escape to numb the unceasing pain of rejection is paralleled with the protagonist's devoted love. Get the logic?

Another detail in the film that defies logic is the main characters' aging process. The suddenly added makeup, graying hair and presence of walking canes were insufficient for the transition. An effective musical score does help narrate the switch of scenes of rejection to despair and pain to final resolution. In addition, great cinematography of palm trees, aerial views of islands, mountain landscape and river crossings capture scenery, but remain mostly irrelevant to the script.

As the film returns to its final resolution, hot-on-the-widow-list Fermina, after brief re-rejection, accepts Florentino's friendship. The passage of time, though shorter this time, mellows this pair in their late 70s to the concluding scene of sexual bliss. In the 21st century of people living longer, one might salute the bravery of geriatric sex rarely seen in modern film. Still, the conclusion is unaccompanied by commitment. Nope, not a family film. If renamed today this film could yield such titles as, "Love in the Time of STD" or "Love in the Time of HIV" in addition to Cholera.

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