TV REVIEW : Love, Letters Entwined in Affairs of the Heart

A young man and a young woman unwittingly hire the same middle-aged scrivener to write love letters to each other in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Letters From the Park” (at 9 tonight on Channels 28, 15 and 24, in Spanish with English subtitles).

The setting is Matanzas, Cuba, in 1913--an idyllic place for a love story, at least when seen through the eyes of Cuban director Tomas Gutierrez Alea. But not everything goes according to plan. The lovers like each other’s letters more than they like each other. And the letter writer himself (Victor LaPlace) falls for the young woman (Ivonne Lopez)--or at least with the idea of falling for her.

Shades of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” But this intermediary is no dashing leader of men, but rather a melancholic widower who occasionally takes comfort in the arms of a golden-hearted prostitute.

The story was inspired by a brief mention in Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera,” but the Nobel laureate created new characters to flesh out this film, which he co-wrote with Eliseo Alberto Diego and director Alea (who is best known for “Memories of Underdevelopment” and “Death of a Bureaucrat”).

Concurrent with the human romance is an affair between the young man (Miquel Paneque) and flying. He is clumsily trying to learn how to pilot a balloon, and his efforts not only distract him from the would-be love of his life, but they also expand the scenic dimensions of the film. Still, the essential spareness of the story isn’t violated. The performances are carefully understated--which helps turn up the eroticism of the final scene.

The script doesn’t hint at the “magical realism” for which Garcia Marquez is widely known. It’s simply a graceful and civilized film about the importance of experiencing affairs of the heart firsthand.