Lost in translation

There are some authors who simply cannot be translated to film. Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez — with his rich magical realism, love for the absurd and dense decade-spanning epics — is one of them.

Unfortunately, screenwriter Ronald Harwood ('The Pianist') and director Mike Newell ('Mona Lisa Smile') try to do just that with what is one of the author's best-selling novels 'Love in the Time of Cholera'.

To add insult to injury, they seem to have completely overlooked the fact that the original novel is, in fact, Spanish. The English-speaking cast — which includes a number of American actors, an Italian heroine and a Spanish hero — affects Colombian accents to varying degrees of success. But even the most successful cannot overcome the fact that an accent only further entrenches the 'Americanisation' of the Spanish classic.

Marquez's novels are embroidered with the magical and the absurd — the charm is not in the story, but in the telling. Stripped of these elements, the plots become cumbersome, tedious and, at worst, juvenile.

Florentino Ariza (Unax Ugalde/Javier Bardem), a young telegraph clerk, falls in love one day whilst delivering a telegram to the home of the lovely Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). He goes home and writes her a very long love letter, which she coyly accepts, and it isn't long before the two epistle-writing young lovers are declaring their undying love for one another.

Unfortunately Fermina's social-climbing father (John Leguizamo) doesn't approve of the match and sends his daughter to live in the country for a while. The letter writing continues and Florentino waits patiently for his 'crowned goddess' to return. When she does however, she seems to have lost interest in their romance and cuts him off with a stern rebuff before promptly marrying the dashing Doctor Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt).

The heart-broken Florentino pines for his love, promising to remain faithful until her husband dies and she once again becomes available. He keeps his spirits up by engaging in random sexual encounters (622 to be exact) with women who, because of his broken heart, find him irresistible. The doctor does eventually die and the aged (but virile) Florentino puts his case forward once again.

The film, which spans the fifty-odd years of the novel (1879 – 1932), comes across as an abridged version, which covers all the bases, but fails to capture the essence of this great romance. The social commentary — which includes a civil war and a cholera outbreak — are glossed over in a few shots of dead people and bomb blasts; the richness of the characters are forfeited in favour of the epic plot; and the beauty of the writing has been lost in translation.

Although Bardem portrays a nuanced Florentino and manages to age with the character, Mezzogiorno is unconvincing as the object of his affection. Cold, fickle and uncharismatic, she hardly seems likely to inspire a love that would last half a century. The enigmatic Catalina Sandino Moreno (Fermina's cousin Hildebranda Sanchez), who steals every scene she is in, would perhaps have been better suited to the part.

The film is not particularly bad — and those who have absolutely no interest whatsoever in literature may even enjoy it — but it is a poor interpretation of or substitute for Marquez's novel.