Love in the Time of Cholera

Based on of Gabriel García Márquez's famous romantic novel, LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA follows postal clerk Florentino (played by Unax Ugalde as a teenager, then Javier Bardem as an adult) from the moment he first spots blue-eyed beauty Fermina (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). But Fermina's widower father. Lorenzo (John Leguizamo is a greedy social climber who won't allow his daughter to marry a mere clerk . Instead, he arranges for her marriage to a wealthy doctor, Juvenal (Benjamin Bratt). The two men are total opposites: Juvenal is a practical-minded scientist, Florentino a desperate romantic. But even as the majority of the population struggles to survive disease (particularly cholera), as well as poverty and selfish government leaders, Fermina's sense of her own limits and options never quite illustrates a broader social and political resonance. As the years pass, Fermina finds her own way to survive the loss of her true love while Florentino deals with his pain by sleeping with hundreds of partners. Though Fermina makes the best of her distinctly female lot (enduring her father's abuses, raising kids, putting up with a cheating spouse), Florentino has more leeway, rhapsodizing to the end.