Of Love and Shadows

Having read the novel, I was curious to see how it would be made into a film. I had high hopes, because the book was extremely poignant and well-written. However, these hopes were dashed within the first five minutes of this truly awful movie.

Now, I'm a fan of both Antonio Banderas and Jennifer Connelly. I think they're great actors. However, Of Love and Shadows brought out the worst in both. The acting was hideous and essentially consisted of Jennifer Connelly using an awful accent while making bedroom eyes at Antionio Banderas, who did the same (but with a much better accent).

Aside from the terrible performances, the real flaw of this film was that it tried to incorporate too much of the book into too small a time frame. There is a good deal of fantastic material in the book, but there is simply too much to be done on screen. What seems to have happened is that the makes didn't exactly realize this and consequently tried to hold on to too many secondary characters and too many story lines. The result was less than satisfactory. I was entirely convinced that anyone who hadn't read the book before seeing the movie would have been completely lost.

In short, I seriously pity Isabel Allende for this horribly botched movie which is entirely unrepresentative of the excellent book she wrote. Do not watch this movie. Read the book.