A gay romantic saga set largely during the Spanish Civil War is tipped as the foreign-language film most likely to be a Best Picture contender at the next Oscars.
asserted
saga → set → Oscars
Currently topping the Spanish box office, this festival hit – which opens in Australia this week – is predicted to run neck and neck with The Odyssey through awards season, with a good chance of beating Christopher Nolan’s classical epic to the gold statuette.
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which → top → statuette
The film centres on a young village musician Sebastian who, having fallen in with General Franco’s rebel forces, is obliged to guard Rafael, a Republican prisoner who was the last lover of Federico Garcia Lorca, the great poet and playwright who was murdered by the fascists in 1936.
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who → centre → 1936
Dying of his wounds, he asks Sebastian to find and save Lorca’s last play, La Bola Negra.
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he → die → play
The play itself – of which only four pages remain in reality – is interwoven with the soldiers’ love story.
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pages → remain → story
La Bola Negra has resonated strongly with audiences in Spain, where a general reluctance to talk about the civil war and long years of dictatorship are being overtaken to usher in an often bitter political debate about the past.
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reluctance → resonate → past
The film, by contrast, shows characters who form loving bonds despite political divisions and endemic homophobia.
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who → show → divisions
“When I read this, I already felt transformed,” said actor Penélope Cruz, whose dynamic turn as a cabaret singer is also tipped to earn an Oscar nod, in a Q&A panel at the London Film Festival.
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turn → read → Festival
“Obviously, we don’t feel that every time we read a script and we don’t make movies thinking they are going to change the world, but when something is this good, it is a contribution to a better world, I am 100 per cent sure.
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I → feel → world
And this is what you see on the faces of people when they watch the movie, those tears, strangers of all different generations hugging each other.
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they → see → other
That is what is happening every day in Spain, where the movie has been playing for three weeks.”
La Bola Negra is the work of a young directing duo, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, known collectively as “Los Javis”, who were first inspired by a play about the relationship between two civil war soldiers that mentioned the lost play.
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that → happen → play
The four pages are held in an archive in Granada.
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pages → hold → Granada
“They opened up the safe of manuscripts for us and there they were.
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they → open → us
The first page is the list of characters,” says Ambrossi.
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Ambrossi → say → characters
“Federico was killed and couldn’t write the play, but we researched and found he was going to use the first explicitly gay character in his career.”
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he → kill → career
La Bola Negra means “the black ball”.
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Negra → mean → ball
The Javis’ idea of what it might have been like begins with Carlos, a young man from a powerful family, being blackballed from Granada’s exclusive men’s club because he is suspected of being homosexual.
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he → begin → club
“We were reimagining Federico’s [Garcia Lorca] world,” says Ambrossi.
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Ambrossi → reimagine → world
“And at some point we realised this is a story of the past of our country, a story of our grandparents.”
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this → realise → grandparents
They agreed they had to weave in a present-day storyline as well, “to talk about how much the past influences our present.”
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past → agree → present
This is the film’s third intertwined narrative strand, in which the missing manuscript turns up in a bequest to a contemporary gay writer.
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manuscript → intertwine → writer
The film was intended as a love story between men, but the directors soon realised they needed some female characters in it “as a breath of fresh air”.
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they → intend → air
Cruz’s character, Nene, sings in clubs jammed with young soldiers who paw and slaver over her while she sparkles, bringing some trashy joy into their lives.
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she → sing → lives
“I felt her pain that she has to hide every day for the hour – or whatever it is – she’s on stage to try and make those young people dream,” says Cruz.
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Cruz → feel → stage
“Probably she is raped every three or four days, but that is also her escape: when she is up there, she is getting oxygen back to keep herself from totally crashing.
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she → rap → herself
I fell in love with her.”
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I → fall → her
Working on La Bola Negra was, she says, “one of the best periods of my life”.
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she → work → life
Miguel Bernardeau plays Lorca’s bereaved lover.
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Bernardeau → play → lover
Rafael Rodriguez Rapun really existed; he was a mining engineer, top footballer and arts enthusiast who met Lorca when he joined his anarchist theatre troupe, La Barraca.
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he → exist → troupe
After Lorca was murdered, Rapun joined the Republican forces.
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Rapun → murder → forces
Although every Spanish schoolchild learns Lorca’s poems and is aware of his literary importance, Bernardeau says nobody was taught anything about his personal life.
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nobody → learn → life
“Which I think for an artist like him is very important.
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I → think → him
Bernardeau says the film has landed at a crucial time in Spain, where a resurgent extreme Right is now trying to reclaim General Francisco Franco as a hero.
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Right → say → hero
Liberal Spaniards, he believes, have been caught off guard.
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he → believe → guard
There has been so little discussion of the war or its aftermath until now, because when democracy was restored in 1977 most people wanted to draw a line under those decades.
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people → restore → decades
All that mattered was a brighter future.
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that → matter → ?
“I am now conscious, having studied more about the war and that specific part of our history, how much we wanted to leave it in the past, not observe it or learn from it,” he says.
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he → study → it
“We didn’t work through the transition with any consciousness of what had happened.”
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what → work → consciousness
A general election has just been announced in Spain, to take place in on November 29.
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election → announce → November
This makes it an interesting time, Bernardeau says, to watch La Bola Negra.
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Bernardeau → make → Negra
…and 7 more, not listed.
The Aporia
