Netflix’s Oscar-Contending Gay Epic ‘La Bola Negra’ Is a Monument to Mediocrity

There’s a simple and rather simple-minded equation in the minds of those who have been swooning over Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra,” a Spanish-produced “queer epic” set in 1932, 1937, and 2017.If you feel any sort of compassion or emotional ache over the right-wing homophobic persecution of Spanish gay men during the Spanish civil war — 1936 to 1939 — in which Franco’s right-wing Nationalists fought the forces defending the leftie Republican government, you’re obliged to love “La Bola Negra.” Period. Because it laments the cruelty that gay guys suffered through back in the ‘30s, and therefore requires your enthusiastic support, no matter how mediocre the film may seem in other respects.Anyone with a heart and a soul will feel stirred by this film, a serious Oscar contender. But in terms of form and technique it’s a mediocre, hamfisted thing. It’s long and painful and arduous to sit through. The dialogue is so relentlessly on-the-nose, it made me plotz. A more succinct way to describe it is “boring.” You could also call it “stultifying.” I knew it would last 159 minutes but it felt to me like David Lean’s nearly four-hour ”Lawrence of Arabia,” which, ironically, was also “gay” to a slight extent. I checked my watch around the 40-minute mark, and then checked it again after what felt like an eternity. I was crestfallen to discover there was an entire hour remaining. I quietly moaned. I almost wept.The Toronto Film Festival voters who preferred “La Bola Negra” over the excellent “I Play Rocky” were — and probably still are — 100% compromised by an appalling lack of taste. All they cared about, it seems, was that “La Bola Negra,” —which mostly abstains from depictions of gay sexual intimacy as it’s all about expressions of hunger and longing — had reached out and asked for their sympathy. They certainly stepped up to the plate.Does anyone remember Martin Sherman’s “Bent” a celebrated 1979 play about the persecution of gay guys in Nazi Germany? Beginning with the historic trauma of 1934’s “Night of the Long Knives,” it was about the haunted and turbulent life of the promiscuous Max — Ian McKellen in the original London production, Richard Gere on Broadway — under the boot of brutal Third Reich homophobia. It ended with Max’s noble suicide in a concentration camp. I saw the Gere version — 46 or 47 years ago — and felt honestly, deeply moved.“La Bola Negra” is basically a Spanish-flavored “Bent” minus the concentration camp but supplanted with firing squads. The Franco fascists, as noted, are in charge of imposing the homophobic misery, and there’s a little “Brokeback Mountain” anguish thrown in for good measure.Inspired by a barely-begun work of the same name by gay playwright Federico García Lorca, and then blended with an Alberto Conejero play called “La Piedra Oscura,” as well as other Lorca texts, it’s basically a lavish gay tutorial that says, over and over, “Feel our pain.”I felt it, all right, but the anguish eventually became my own. I died a thousand small deaths. For”La Bola Negra” never stops telling us how cruel and ghastly Spanish homophobia was. Of course your heart goes out to the sufferers, but the writing is so pedestrian and instructive that you just want it to stop.Why did I feel such genuine empathy and compassion for Luca Guadagnino’s characters in “Queer” and “Call Me By Your Name” and absolutely nothing for the gay men in “La Bola Negra”?I understand and respect the basic suppressive scheme of “La Bola Negra.” It’s all about the emotional power of sharing desire without result. Gay longing and hunger that is sought but never acted upon, but strongly felt at every turn.After a while it hits you that every guy who’s not playing a fascist is apparently thinking about getting down with another dude. Except physical sex never happens, as noted, or at least not during the 1930s sequences. And that’s fine.Why, however, do Calvo and Ambrossi show us a fat bearded gay character named Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez), eventually revealed to be a grandson of a conflicted gay character named Sebastian (played in period by the nine-syllable Guitarricadelafuente). Why are we treated to a long-lens shot of Alberto getting squishy-rammed early on? That kind of breaks the feel-it-but-don’t-show-it aesthetic, no? Penélope Cruz in ‘La Bola Negra.’ NetflixBack in the bad old days there was a certain dismissive term that rhymed with “rag tag” — a term that described an older, flamboyant woman who loves gay guys and who is deeply loved by the gay community in return. Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close play such characters in this thing, and their acting gives you the eye-roll and the pounding headache…Lord!There’s a narrated line — “The heart of a [rhymes with “shag it”] is filled with an ocean of secrets” — that the Paris theatre crowd really laughed at.The absolute worst line is, “And how do I protect myself from your beauty?” Dialogue on this level is literally squirm-inducing.Due respect for Sun contributor Sebastian Doggart, who raved about “La Bola Negra” recently. He called it “the best film I have seen this year,” and one that delivers an emotional “blow to the chest”., which he has “felt only a few times in a cinema.” All I can figure is that Mr. Doggart was emotionally invested in the “feel our pain” mythology going in. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but his susceptibility blinded him, I fear, to the film’s atmosphere of crushing second-rateness.

Netflix’s Oscar-Contending Gay Epic ‘La Bola Negra’ Is a Monument to Mediocrity

Netflix’s Oscar-Contending Gay Epic ‘La Bola Negra’ Is a Monument to Mediocrity

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