La Bola Negra is a Beautiful Backdrop Amongst a Dark History

Making its North American debut at the Telluride Film Festival, La Bola Negra star Guitarricadelafuente  (who is stunning in the role of Sebastián) while introducing the film joked “If you love this movie when it’s done then our gay magic is done.”

The film begins in 1937, a year into the Spanish Civil War, in a village near Granada. A sad-eyed young trumpet player named Sebastián is eagerly awaiting
with his local band to welcome Italian troops. Instead, the troops attack the village in a blaze of artillery from both air and land, killing everyone in sight, including Sebastián’s mother. He escapes and finds himself serving in the very war that has destroyed his world as he once knew it.

It takes a minute to understand what is going on, but this story is simply one of the three different storylines that unfold in La Bola Negra. The opening scene is lifted from Alberto Conejero’s play La piedra oscura, which swept the
Spanish theater awards upon its premiere in 2015.  Conejero’s play lays the foundation for La Bola Negra’s wartime love story between Sebastián (Guitarricadela- fuente), a Nationalist soldier, and the Republican prisoner
he’s tasked with guarding, Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau).

Other elements of the film were inspired by La Bola Negra, a play that the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca started but never finished before he was executed by a Nationalist firing squad on a hillside outside of Granada in August 1936, mere weeks after the Spanish Civil War ignited.

Beyond the war, the film rewinds five years, to 1932, to Carlos (Milo Quifes), who is trying, to no avail, to become a member of his father’s social club. From there, the story jumps to 2017, when an aimless young historian (Carlos
González) receives news of a surprise inheritance from his estranged grandfather.

The performances are vulnerable and mind blowing to say the least, especially from Guitarricadelafuente as Sebastián. His aura is very reminiscent of a young Al Pacino in “The Godfather”. He has these eyes that pierce through your soul without a single word ever being uttered, but speaking volumes.  His scene after having to shoot his lover brought tears to my eyes.  To have the soul crushing type of love he briefly shared knowing it will never see it have a fully realized life was heartbreaking.

Penelope Cruz steals the film with a brief, but impactful performance as an Edith Piaf looking wartime chanteuse Nené Romero. The energy of the film light up with her energetic, alluring essence.

And then there’s Glenn Close.  Is there anything this woman can’t do?  As historian Isabelle Durand, she mostly speaks in Spanish.  Yet, her character enforces the importance of history, when and how it’s preserved and how ancestors must fight to keep the stories alive and relevant at all costs.

Cinematographer, Gris Jordana creates a cinematic landscape that is absolutely breathtaking.  Particularly one of the end scenes where Carlos is trekking through a never ending mountain of snow. Jordana makes it look like cloud heavens of earth that any child would love to roll in for eternity and that’s just one scene.

At its essence, La Bola Negra through every vignette and character gracefully and beautifully executes the pain and suffering caused when not being your authentic self has no options.  After all, love knows no gender or race.

Produced by Netflix, La Bola Negra is set to have its theatrical release on October 16th followed by a streaming release on the platform December 2nd.