(First published at Desicritics)
The wife and I were in the windy city on Thanksgiving Day. After croissants and a jasmine tea by the river, we agreed to complete a romantic morning by watching a romantic matinee. I hadn't seen/read any previews on Love In The Time of Cholera, knowing only that it was about longing in love or some such. That's romantic, we figured, and it's based on a book by the Great Garcia who brilliantly allegorized the futility and tragedy of our species in his 'One Hundred Years...', so we can't go wrong, re. Alas, go wrong we did.
Florentino Ariza, the boy, is smitten by Fermina, the village belle, and half a century of sex with over six hundred women doesn’t make a man of him so that he still ‘loves’ and pines for Fermina. I know, it’s supposed to be Profound - a man looking for True Love, the Holy Grail that’s spiritual and loftier than all the physical relationships he has (the number of which would make Genghis Khan look like a monk). I know that his diary of sexual conquests isn’t a high school kid’s sco
rebook of chi
cks he laid; it’s a chronicle of his journey towards True Love. And when he paints, in turpentine, the letters “This is mine” along with an arrow pointing downward (to you know where) on the belly of a woman, leading to her husband discovering it and slashing her throat, it’s supposed to convey how possessiveness in love destroys (and how turpentine is hard to get off human skin).
Oh, and by the way, all this happens in the time of cholera. Don’t ask me why.Women undress like it’s an episode of Senoritas Gone Wild, and Florentino (Garcia?) seems to have a brazenly narcissistic “the chicks dig me” air about him. Fermina is the only character you sympathize with; she refers to Florentino as “empty”, which is true of the plot as much as the protagonist; she reconciles with real life with a dignity and charm bordering on poignancy. Our hero, on the other hand, writes business letters in rhyme because “all I can write is love” and such juvenile, lofty gobbledygook. The only redeeming moments are the unpretentiously real ones, like Fermina’s wedding night.
This is my problem with magic realism run amok: metaphors tend to lose their purpose as means to illuminating truth and become ends in themselves. Characters become, to quote Amitava Kumar, “walking-talking metaphors”. The narrative space is crowded by metaphors - often contrived, tenuous, and downright absurd – and meaning struggles to find a place in it.
So, unless you're a horny heterosexual male, a connoisseur of stretched metaphors, or interested in the chemical bonding of turpentine and the epidermis, avoid this one.
Florentino Ariza, the boy, is smitten by Fermina, the village belle, and half a century of sex with over six hundred women doesn’t make a man of him so that he still ‘loves’ and pines for Fermina. I know, it’s supposed to be Profound - a man looking for True Love, the Holy Grail that’s spiritual and loftier than all the physical relationships he has (the number of which would make Genghis Khan look like a monk). I know that his diary of sexual conquests isn’t a high school kid’s sco
rebook of chicks he laid; it’s a chronicle of his journey towards True Love. And when he paints, in turpentine, the letters “This is mine” along with an arrow pointing downward (to you know where) on the belly of a woman, leading to her husband discovering it and slashing her throat, it’s supposed to convey how possessiveness in love destroys (and how turpentine is hard to get off human skin).Oh, and by the way, all this happens in the time of cholera. Don’t ask me why.Women undress like it’s an episode of Senoritas Gone Wild, and Florentino (Garcia?) seems to have a brazenly narcissistic “the chicks dig me” air about him. Fermina is the only character you sympathize with; she refers to Florentino as “empty”, which is true of the plot as much as the protagonist; she reconciles with real life with a dignity and charm bordering on poignancy. Our hero, on the other hand, writes business letters in rhyme because “all I can write is love” and such juvenile, lofty gobbledygook. The only redeeming moments are the unpretentiously real ones, like Fermina’s wedding night.
This is my problem with magic realism run amok: metaphors tend to lose their purpose as means to illuminating truth and become ends in themselves. Characters become, to quote Amitava Kumar, “walking-talking metaphors”. The narrative space is crowded by metaphors - often contrived, tenuous, and downright absurd – and meaning struggles to find a place in it.
So, unless you're a horny heterosexual male, a connoisseur of stretched metaphors, or interested in the chemical bonding of turpentine and the epidermis, avoid this one.
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