“Cholera” Fails to Fell Reviewers
Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera” is one of my favorite novels, with passages of such emotional acuity that you feel your own heart is being examined even as you read about characters who lived in Colombia a hundred years ago. The movie version, directed by Mike Newell, is being released this weekend, and so far most reviewers are far from enthralled, feeling that the page-to-screen translation is entirely too literal. With the exception of David Denby in The New Yorker, the lead performance of Javier Bardem (pictured with Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is being praised, which only boosts that Spanish actor’s Oscar stock for his supporting performance in “No Country for Old Men.” (Which, given the jinx on frontrunners, probably means he won’t make it to the podium on Hollywood’s big night; he’ll have to watch as perhaps Hal Holbrook of “Into the Wild” grabs the statuette.)
