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EL BOLA Send This Review to a Friend
A gem made in Spain, "El Bola" is unusual from the moment it starts with adolescents playing chicken by seeing who can retrieve a bottle from railroad tracks seconds before an oncoming train passes. The film immediately becomes riveting. At the center is a situation of child abuse, but there's much more.
El Bola is the name of the boy who's the protagonist (Juan Jose Ballesta), who gets the nickname Pellet from his habit of toying with a ball bearing. At school he meets a new friend, Alfredo (Pablo Galan), and the film nicely depicts the comradeship that develops between them. Bolo is closed-mouthed about his home life, where his abusive father beats him out of unrelieved anger and perhaps frustration and guilt at the previous loss of a son, who may also have been beaten.
Bolo finds comfort in Pablo's home, but things become very complicated, as their efforts at intervention lead to problems as Pablo's life heads further and further into crisis. Achero Manas directs with admirable assurance in his first feature, which packs power at every turn even when it is being understated, and the performances are uniformly effective.
"El Bola" was shown at the 2002 New Directors/New Films series sponsored jointly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. As an import from Spain, it augers well for the future work of its director. A Film Movement release.
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