Don’t believe the hype about La Bola Negra
I live in a hype-proof bunker and knew nothing about La Bola Negra before I attended the screening. The film won the best director prize at Cannes, or perhaps the best directors prize, since Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi share the job. You might expect a film acclaimed for its direction to be well paced and confident of where it’s going – direction means steering, after all – but that doesn’t describe the film I saw. Raul Refree’s score, for instance, is not only intrusive but bewildering, churning through moods and instrumental combinations (horn and flute, solo piano tinkles, braying brass) faster than anything that develops on screen. La Bola Negra starts during the Spanish Civil War, with a village turning out to salute the Italian air force as it flies over.
