A pair of petal pushers

A quick scan of any greeting card aisle will tell you that almost nothing says love faster than the red rose. And marketers behind two romantic films this season have taken the rose motif and run with it.

The poster for the just-released “Love in the Time of Cholera” features a large, single red rose hanging against a stark, black background. A small stream of carefully placed dewdrops (or are they teardrops?) falls onto a rose petal that discreetly covers a naked woman’s back. Even if moviegoers never heard of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel on which the film is based, they see an ad oozing “epic love story.”

Francis Ford Coppola’s “Youth Without Youth,” opening Dec. 14, is a romance that plays with time, language and memory. A collage of red roses, along with a ghostlike image of a kissing couple, adorns the press materials. We’ll forgive the maudlin floral theme here, just a little, because three roses factor in the story.

Classic? Cliche? Whatever scent these graphics leave, clearly studios are hoping that everything comes up roses -- at least at the box office.

-- Christine N. Ziemba