The dubbing of this film makes it difficult to follow. The actors' lips do not move in tandem with what appears to be dubbing in to Spanish. (The original may have been in Portuguese, filmed in Brazil.)<p>There are, however, several interesting cinematic expressions of the magic component of García Márquez's new literary genre, magical realism. Making a movie out of a García Márquez novel or short story certainly gives the privilege of being able to depict, on film, extraordinary and magical events. The director of this film certainly had "literary license" to think up the surrealistic events you will see. Think of it as the cinematographic equivalent of expressionism or surrealism in painting (artistic movements often begin in painting and only much later find expression in literature). Expressionism portrays reality in broad strokes, making it more beautiful in an impossible way.<p>This movie tries to be faithful to García Márquez's effort to portray (an often difficult) reality in a way that produces fascination and wonder. The film only partially succeeds; sometimes I found there was both wonder and puzzlement as to what was going on.<p>The young actress portraying a protagonist has a beauty (candidly depicted in the film) that carries the film in some parts. Her youthfulness is well portrayed, as are her potential and her sexuality.<p>Viewers enjoying this film should definitely see the intriguing and wide-open film "Eréndira", based on García Márquez's gem of a novella "La increíble y triste historia de la cándida Eréndira y su abuela desalmada" ("The incredible and sad tale of innocent Erendira and her heartless grandmother").
Reader Reviews
I was looking for a video of this short story by Marquez because my high school class was reading it in school. I borrowed the tape from a local library before I bought it to see if we wanted a copy in our library.
I thought the movie was very true (overall to the author), and I enjoyed how closely the director kept to the story, but then the second half changed dramatically from the first half, so much that I became very thankful that I previewed the tape before I showed it to my class. There was quite a bit of profanity in the second half, AND there were several sexual scenes that could not be shown in the classroom. These scenes were not in the short story, so I guess they were added to give some spice to the video, but I thought it was very unnecesary, and of course, now my students can't enjoy it in class as we had hoped to do after we read the story. Obviously, Hollywood isn't the only production area that adds 'T & A' because they think it will help sell the video.
