This movie was recommended to me by my Peruvian paramour back in July or August. It was pointed out to me that the only other opinion I listen to in movies is my cousin's. True, she does get a monthly feature but that doesn't mean that I will ignore other suggestions and/or fail to give credit. If you, dear readers, think there is a movie out there that I should see, leave me a comment about it and you will see it emblazoned here along with my unvarnished opinion.So there.
I did rather enjoy this film. I don't know that I'd call it an 'epic romance' but it's very good. Olivier Martinez (hot!) plays an Italian calvary officer exiled in France during an outbreak of cholera. He is being pursued by Austrian agents from the Hapsburg Empire due to political tensions at that time, just after the Napoleonic War. While trying to get back to his native country, he is chased onto the rooftops of a town by an angry panicked mob, terrified of infection. He ends up hiding in a house and then traveling with Juliette Binoche, a French noblewoman looking for her husband.
It's a beautifully understated movie and I only have one complaint. After his first experience running across a town full of corpses, the calvary officer runs into a doctor who tells him that the treatment for cholera is the application of herbal elixir and then rubbing the extremities to promote blood flow.
This is the single stupidest piece of medical fiction I had heard in a while and every time he tried this method, it just took me right out of the film. I know that at the time no one understood that cholera was a bacterial infection brought on by contaminated food or water, and that they were just doing the best that they could. I know that it's a totally nit-picky thing to judge the movie on. I. Can't. Help. It.
Like I said, everything else about the movie is great. I'm sure no one but me cares about the inaccuracy of cholera treatment, which I'm also fairly certain was only introduced so they could show Juliette Binoche naked.
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