Giovanna Mezzogiorno has signed on with Javier Bardem in the new film, Love in the Time of Cholera for New Line Cinema.

The unrequited love story, based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, spans 50 years during the turn of the century in South America; Bardem and Mezzogiorno play lovers. The Hollywood Reporter adds the two wait out careers, marriages, affairs and deaths until they can reunite.

Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is directing the Ron Harwood (Being Julia) screenplay; production is set to begin in Brazil on Aug. 15 for Love in the Time of Cholera.