John Leguizamo and Benjamin Bratt, co-stars in Love In The Time of Cholera, share their interpretations of Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece and ponder the mysteries of love, lust and language.

On reading Love in the Time of Cholera:
Leguizamo: I had read 100 Years of Solitude before, but I never read Love in the Time of Cholera because it was a romantic story. I had to read it for the movie, and I fell in love with the book! This guy waits fifty years for his one true love, but he sleeps with six hundred and twenty-four fuckin’ women to get there! That’s my type of love story.

Bratt: I thought I had read it because the title is so popular. But when I opened the first two pages, I recognized it for the masterpiece that it is, and I realized that I hadn’t. If I had, it would have made an indelible impression on me. Márquez is one of the founders of magical realism, and I think his understanding of love and all its perplexities is astonishing. He understands and illustrates clearly how romantic love can become an addiction and create a kind of sickness. We go insane if we get to taste it but don’t get to have it. We will do everything in our power to get it—including sleeping with six hundred and twenty women.

Leguizamo: I would have forgotten at fifty—after the crabs!

On the difference between working on a film like Pinero versus Love in the Time of Cholera:

Leguizamo: This is much more of a commercial venture, whereas Piñero and Crónicas were more organically Latin. They were films created by Latinos, directed by Latinos and starring Latinos. It’s a different sensibility.

Bratt: There is a familiar structure to the story—boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. But between the last two phases there’s a span of fifty years, and that’s what makes it unique. Beyond that, what makes it incomparable is the mastery of the language.
Leguizamo: And you’ve never seen eighty-year-old people hitting skins like you have in this movie. Imagine your grandparents getting it on. How sexy is that?