Movie · 2007 · Drama, Romance · 2h 19m · R · English
Curator score: 0.4/10 (25.2K ratings)
How long would you wait for love?
Overview
In Colombia just after the Great War, an old man falls from a ladder; dying, he professes great love for his wife. After the funeral, a man calls on the widow - she dismisses him angrily. Flash back more than 50 years to the day Florentino Ariza, a telegraph boy, falls in love with Fermina Daza, the daughter of a mule trader.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.4/10
IMDb: 6.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 25%
Metacritic: 43
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Mike Newell
Production
New Line Cinema, Summit Entertainment, Stone Village Pictures, Grosvenor Park Productions
Cast
Javier Bardem, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt, John Leguizamo, Fernanda Montenegro, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Alicia Borrachero, Liev Schreiber, Laura Harring, Héctor Elizondo, Ana Claudia Talancón, Angie Cepeda, Marcela Mar, Rubria Negrao, Unax Ugalde, Andrés Parra, Horacio Tavera, Salvatore Basile, Margalida Castro, Carolina Cuervo
Curator Review
Verdict
A lavish, old-world romance with handsome locations and a sweeping tragic premise, but the film is widely felt to flatten Gabriel García Márquez’s lyrical, magical texture into a conventional melodrama. It has moments of sincerity and scale, yet the pacing, tone, and adaptation choices make it more admirable in concept than fully satisfying on screen.
Best for
Viewers who like long, operatic romances
Fans of literary adaptations and period melodrama
Audiences drawn to lush production design and South American settings
People who don’t mind a slow, sentimental love story
Skip if
You want a faithful, magical-realist adaptation
You’re impatient with melodrama or long runtimes
You prefer subtle chemistry over grand, declarative romance
You’re sensitive to uneven tone or heavy-handed makeup/aging effects
Overview
Love in the Time of Cholera is an ambitious attempt to turn a famously unfilmable novel into a sweeping romantic epic. The result is handsome and earnest, with rich period detail, tropical atmosphere, and a story built around obsession, waiting, and the stubborn persistence of desire.
Worth noting
But the film often feels like it is illustrating the novel rather than finding a cinematic equivalent for its strange, feverish soul. The romance plays more conventionally than it should, and the emotional temperature can feel oddly muted for a story about lifelong fixation.
Bottom line
There are pleasures here: the scale, the setting, and the commitment of the performances. Still, the adaptation is most compelling as a curiosity for readers of García Márquez or viewers who enjoy stately, old-fashioned romantic dramas more than as a fully transporting love story.
Top Letterboxd reviews
maría (2★) · 147 likes
When will someone make a great Gabriel García Márquez's adaptation, like the one he deserves?
shookone (1★) · 81 likes
...when a film drives the potential reader away from the original literature it's based on and should ideally stay humble towards.
Deeply conventional, uninspired, almost at a loss in the face of the bombastic source material, the film based on Gabriel García Márquez' novel El amor en los tiempos del cólera disintegrates into a pathetic, at times unintentionally funny heap of misery. The actors disgrace in overacting to Shakira's inappropriate, schmaltzy score. A lousy, melancholic romance from the despondent manufacturer Newell.
algonsoft · 75 likes
hey what's up everyone my name is hollywood and for my next magic trick i will cast a bunch of europeans to play latinos. also the make up will consist of crayolas and a bag of flour
lyvmoore (2★) · 65 likes
He had sex with 622 women?? More like love in the time of chlamydia
Kristi Sejdi (1.5★) · 48 likes
It rarely happens that the books I like are adapted into good movies. This is why I hesitate to watch films based on works by my favorite authors, such as Dostoevsky and Gabriel García Márquez. I mean, look at what they've done to one of my favorite books. Garcia Márquez never sentimentalizes his protagonists; they are unique. He was able to create powerful characters, but in this movie, all the characters seem empty and mediocre. It felt like I was… more It rarely happens that the books I like are adapted into good movies. This is why I hesitate to watch films based on works by my favorite authors, such as Dostoevsky and Gabriel García Márquez. I mean, look at what they've done to one of my favorite books. Garcia Márquez never sentimentalizes his protagonists; they are unique. He was able to create powerful characters, but in this movie, all the characters seem empty and mediocre. It felt like I was… more
2004 · Drama, Romance, War · 2h 13m · R · Curator 6.6/10 (112.4K ratings)
A romantic epic about devotion, memory, and waiting against the backdrop of history and loss.
Topics
period romance, literary adaptation, melodrama, Latin American setting, tragic love story, obsessive longing, lush visuals, slow-burn, old age, historical drama