Though Cartagena in the late 19th Century is beautifully evoked in director Mike Newell's visually sumptuous film, there's something missing at the core of this love story.

If further proof were needed of my dispiriting theory that the best novels rarely make the best films, it is to be found, richly scented and sumptuously packaged, in Love in the Time of Cholera.

A valiant attempt to turn a complex novel into a compelling movie is hamstrung by a conventional literary sensibility, an uneven tone and, crucially, a failure to establish a moving, meaningful connection between its two major players.

By any measuring stick, the book is clearly better than the film.