The Old Man Who Read Love Stories

Synopsis: A man is forced to confront a dangerous female jaguar and his own past through the sacrificial killing of the beast he has grown to love.

Genre: Adventure, Drama

Director(s): Rolf de Heer

Actors: Richard Dreyfuss, Timothy Spall, Hugo Weaving, Cathy Tyson

Production: Océan Films

2 wins & 15 nominations.


IMDB:: 6.6

Collection Edit Watch PDF Buy

: NOT RATED
Year:: 2001
: 115 min
: 34 Views

The tiny outpost of El Idilio
was so remote that it might
be said
it was at the end of the earth.
In truth, it was far up a river.
A distant tributary in the great
Amazonian system
deep in a jungle whose frontiers
may never be drawn.
Just upstream lived Antonio Bolivar,
alone in a hut of his own
making
on land of his own choosing.
Antonio guessed he was aged
more than 60,
but the few inhabitants
of El Idilio
simply called him "Old Man".
As a young man,
Antonio had left the mountains of
his birth with his wife, Dolores,
to help colonize the Amazonian
jungle.
The government was promising
large tracts of land
and plentiful technical help
to the would-be settlers.
After three weeks of travelling,
they were put ashore at a bend
in the river.
They were assigned two
hectares of jungle,
a couple of machetes and a bag,
empty of promises.
Antonio remained in the jungle
for almost 40 years.
Finally emerging from the jungle
and settling in El Idilio,
Antonio Bolivar discovered
he possessed the antidote
against the poison of old age.
"One final time..."
He could read.
"... the lovers joined together
in a tor-rid
embrace... torrid embrace...
holding...
squeezing,
clasping each other
desperately...
their hands...
sear-ching,
their mouths...
burning".
Their hands searching, huh?
Searching for what?
And why are their mouths
burning?
I can guess why.
"It was
a kiss
of im-pass-ioned
in-ten-si-ty".
"A kiss...
to re-mem-ber
their...
lives... by".
That's a strange way to end
a book.
"A kiss to remember their
lives by".
I don't remember my life
by any kisses.
Not even with my wife.
Antonio and Dolores
had known each other as children,
living in a mountain
village near the Embaboran
volcano.
They had been betrothed
as thirteen-year-olds.
Not that, Antonio.
Those kisses are sinful,
I can feel it.
In that green hell of the jungle,
Dolores didn't survive two years.
Not many kisses with you,
were there, Dolores?
She was carried off
by a burning fever,
racked with malaria.
"It was a kiss...
of impassioned intensity...
impassioned intensity...
impassioned...
intensity..."
No,
the people...
don't kiss at all.
That's the impassioned intensity,
but no kissing.
Antonio Bolivar...
you are not one of us.
But you are like us.
That's why we want you with us.
That's why...
you must go away some time.
So that... we can feel
the sadness...
of not being able to talk to you.
Josefina...
"It was a kiss
of impassioned intensity...
A kiss
to remember
their lives by".
I think I understand.
The rains were coming,
that time of year when El Idilio's
isolation was even more complete.
The riverboat that visited
every few months
wouldn't now return after this trip
until the wet season was over.
That left El Idilio's
only civil servant,
his Excellency the Mayor,
in a temper even more foul
than usual.
Zamora!
The Mayor's chief occupation
was managing his beer supply.
Tell Josefina to get me
another beer!
Seated in his office, he would
eke out each
bottle by taking a sip at a time,
for he knew that once his supply
was exhausted,
life would become even more
desperate.
Down on the wharf,
Doctor Rubicondo Loachamin's
twice-yearly
travelling dental clinic
was open for business.
Does that hurt?
The good doctor's portable
chair was quite
an institution along the rivers.
It's supposed to hurt.
And whose fault is that?
Mine?
Speak up.
Oh, of course, you can't.
Well, it's the government's fault,
get that into your thick skull.
All of you thick-skulled no-hopers,
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