Die Liebe in den Zeiten der Cholera (2007)

Die Liebe in den Zeiten der Cholera: Directed by Mike Newell. With Benjamin Bratt, Gina Bernard Forbes, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Javier Bardem. Florentino, rejected by the beautiful Fermina at a young age, devotes much of his adult life to carnal affairs as a desperate attempt to heal his broken heart.

“This was a vulgar and empty film. There was no content, only u0026quot;emotions,u0026quot; for most of it, and very flat characters. It was exploitative in the extreme, so much so that emotional intensity the film was striving for ended up seeming a bit like a joke, and had no actual pull. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIf you take away all of the psychology from characters and reduce them to u0026quot;basic emotionsu0026quot; such as love, pain, sadness, fear, etc., but those emotions are not motivated by the story, then what you have is an empty spectacle, a bit like a live show at Disneyland. Not to mention the painful and unintentional mix of gritty realism and artifice, such as characters aging at different rates, having glued on mustaches that look like theyu0026#39;re going to fall off, having an old head and a young body in a nude shot, or one character having a New York accent while the rest have Spanish accents (why wasnu0026#39;t the film in Spanish to begin with)?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eLots of gratuitous titties, done in an offensive way. And anachronisms such as the use of the word f**k in 1890, as in u0026quot;your father f**ked everything in sight!u0026quot; Ridiculous. In its favor the film has nice cinematography and some good costumes, and I think some of the actors made a valiant effort, but I still have to give it a 1 for being so condescending to its audience and for ruining the Marquez novel.”