Steve Hilton on affordability, homelessness, and yes…that ad

First up, La Bola Negra, or The Black Ball.

And this one spans a century in the life of three men in Spain whose stories are interconnected.

It's based on an unfinished Federico Garcia Lorca play and another work from a contemporary Spanish playwright.

There are only four pages that exist from this

play.

Okay, so you heard Glenn Close there playing the English-speaking character, and the Spanish part is roughly translated as, you have to be what you're meant to be, a man.

Allison, the co-directors of this film won Best Director at Cannes this year.

And what do you think of this movie?

Yeah, this is a film that's coming from Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrosi, who are kind of creative partners.

They're former, like, romantic partners, though that apparently ended kind of around the time they finished this movie, and are, you know, actors.

They created the TV series Veneno.

They are judges on Drag Race España.

So they are real kind of personalities in addition to being directors.

And this is a genuinely maximalist, arms outstretched work.

In addition to spanning these three different storylines, it also tries to reach into the history of Spain and its relationships with culture.

Fascism, you know, during the 30s in particular, that's when two of these storylines are set, but also with ideas of masculinity in terms of homophobia.

And it's not just based on an unfinished Lorca play.

It is also about Lorca and inspired by Lorca in a lot of ways.

It kind of has this enormous romantic, ecstatic feeling.

uh sequence towards the end that that is i think really beautiful i think there are quibbles you could make about this movie in particular it really glosses over some aspects of politics that i'm sure for some people will be a little maddening but i just found it's just enormous emotional um transparency to be really compelling and to to really carry the film through plus uh you mentioned glenn close who is in here and does speak some spanish um There's also a great extended cameo from Penelope Cruz as this kind of burlesque sort of performer.

It's just a movie with a lot going on, and it's got an enormous heart.

So I was pretty fond of it, and I expect that this will be a movie we will be talking about a lot as we go into awards season.

Tim, Lorca plays are often filled with passionate characters suffering in tight constraints of rigid societies.

So is that the theme in this movie?

Yeah, that's definitely one of the themes.