Love in the Time of Cholera the reader is reminded repeatedly of his more sinister exploits. The novel examines romantic love in myriad forms, both "ideal" and "depraved", and continually forces the reader to question such ready-made characterizations by introducing elements antithetical to these facile judgments. García Márquez's main notion is that lovesickness is literally an illness, a disease comparable to cholera. Florentino suffers from this just as he might suffer from any malady. At one point, he conflates his physical pain with his amorous pain when he vomits after eating flowers in order to imbibe Fermina's scent. In the final chapter, the Captain's declaration of
Love in the Time of Money the film's artificiality, making you gratingly aware of how much has been left out and how much of the drama is based on secondhand assumptions rather than genuine insight." Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote, "It's not about love. It's not about money. It's not even about sex, although the transaction of cold, love-starved sexual business propels the daisy-chain encounters that make up "Love in the Time of Money". If anything, theater director Peter Mattei's dingy, mannered, visually ragged resetting of Max Ophuls' unimprovable 1950 beaut "La Ronde" (based on an 1896 play by Arthur Schnitzler) is about scenes of