By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***** RUNTIME: 159 minutes

Welcome to the Spanish-language underdog to beat The Odyssey to the best film Oscar that is likely to inspire aspiring writers as well as those seeking to live as they want to.

• Read on for reasons including how La Bola Negra‘s Oscar buzz is truly deserved and worth catching on the big screen

The film takes its own inspiration from the titular La Bola Negra (The Black Ball), an incomplete work by Spain’s Federico García Lorca of which just 4 pages remain, about the form of rejection to a young man attempting to join a Granada social club on the basis of his perceived sexuality.

This is the 1932 strand of the story and 1 of 3 timelines including a trumpeter forced to join the Nationalists in 1937 guarding a Republican prisoner of war in a hospital and a present day struggling author invited to Cantabria to receive an inheritance from his estranged maternal grandfather.

Directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi – Los Javis – consistently question their country’s relationship with the past as they reaffirm the idea of author Lorca’s homosexuality.

Carlos González plays reluctant historian Alberto warned by the mother he struggles to understand against delving too deeply into his grandfather’s affairs.

In 1932 we follow troubled Milo Quifes as Carlos caught between the will of his father to rear a straight son and the affections of his friends who long for change as war threatens.

In 1937 perhaps the tale’s most affecting strand is of gentle Guitarricadelafuente’s musical Sebastián falling for the mysterious Rafael, embodied by the rugged Miguel Bernardeau, who becomes besotted with him and the unusual written love letter poetry he keeps close to his heart.

It’s this section which includes an uproarious cameo from Penelope Cruz as a cabaret entertainer wowing the troops and intriguing Sebastian with tales of sinful pre-war Madrid and a cross-dressing entertainer.

Glenn Close (Mother Of The Maid, Public Theater, New York) appears later in a devastating cameo explaining to Alberto why she’s determined for Spain to embrace Lorca’s homosexuality.

Not only this but La Bola Negra looks astonishing on a big screen with some truly breathtaking setpieces.

Unexpected present day revelations in its final act prove both pleasing and tear-provoking. La Bola Negra‘s Oscar buzz is truly deserved and worth catching on the biggest cinema screen you can.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Netflix
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