LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA (2007) (**1/2)

Director Mike Newell (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL) attempts a screen adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism classic and translates it into a marginal romance novel. In the transition, the story lost all its nuance, making the grand romance feel stiff instead of passionate. All the pieces are there and a good movie often breaks through, but it lacks the spark that would have given it life.

Florentino Ariza is smitten by Fermina Daza (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, 2001's ONE LAST KISS) upon laying eyes on her for the first time. Florentino is played as a tortured teen by Unax Ugalde (GOYA'S GHOST) and as an adult by Oscar-winner Javier Bardem (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN). As a teen, Florentino's every thought is consumed by Fermina, but her rich father Lorenzo (John Leguizamo, SUMMER OF SAM) can't have a clerk marrying his daughter, so he sends her away to live with her cousin Hildebranda Sanchez (Catalina Sandino Moreno, MARIA FULL OF GRACE). Florentino saves himself for her, but when she returns, she rejects him and marries the doctor Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt, TV's LAW & ORDER). Now Florentino, played by Bardem, becomes an unassuming ladies man, who keeps a journal of all his sexual conquests, but secretly longs for his soul mate Fermina. So when Juvenal dies, which we see at the start of the film, Florentino goes to Fermina on the day of the funeral to declare his love once again, and is rejected once again for his insensitivity.

What derails the film from the start is a lack of passion between Ugalde and Mezzogiorno. They are being kept apart and communicate through letters, but we don't get enough of the feeling of those letters. And when they are alone neither of the performers conjure the flames of the audience. They come off as two bland kids in lust with each other because someone is keeping them apart. Then when Fermina so easily dismisses Florentino, the feeling that their romance was meaningless is further enforced. Even more off putting is the life that Moreno brings to her role, wanting Newell to have put her in the lead.

Without the foundation of this romance from the start, nothing else really works. The longing for Florentino's lost love through his many women doesn't have the same bittersweet power that it should, despite Bardem's unique performance. The actor finds a way to avoid all the Don Juan clichés and still make his character believable as a notorious lover. Mezzogiorno and Bratt's rocky marriage doesn't add much passion either, because it seems to be going through common cliché plot points without any real emotion.

The romance begins to click, however, at the end when the old Florentino sets out to charm the widowed Fermina. Mezzogiorno plays the down moments well, but is too reserved for the high notes. The beauty of Marquez's epic romance is still there, but the longing that is supposed to pull us through a lifetime of waiting is never there. In a way, the film is like Florentino and Fermina's romance, it had so much promise to be something beautiful for its entire length, but through missteps only attains fulfillment in the end.