La Bola Negra 🎥 is a Spanish movie based on, or inspired by, an unfinished play by Gabriel Garcia Lorca. Across three strands and three times we have a completed version of the play; the civil war experiences of a young man in Franco’s army who has Lorca’s lover as a prisoner; and a present-day would-be playwright who is the grandson of the soldier.
In reality only four pages of of the play exist. The film is the story of the play in multiple senses, therefore: the story told in the play itself, and also of how the play script survived.
I enjoyed it a great deal, but do feel it’s overlong. There were several places toward the end where I both expected it to end and thought, ‘They should have stopped it there.’ But as the Best Director Award winner at Cannes, I daresay we’ll be hearing about it when the Oscars come round.