‘La Bola Negra' Wins BFI London Film Festival Audience Award, But Are Critics Finally Snapping Out of It?

The awards keep coming for "La Bola Negra." The Cannes-prized epic, it won best director, has been playing like gangbusters at festivals.

The film has just picked up the audience award at the BFI London Film Festival, adding to a collection that already includes the People's Choice Award at Toronto and audience prizes at San Sebastián, Busan, Sydney and Middleburg. It also topped the unofficial audience poll at Telluride. That's seven big festivals it has conquered

The film has also passed $43M at the global box office. Audiences clearly love this movie. It's an Oscar contender for Best Picture, and at this point a nomination looks like a lock. I'm still not on board.

"La Bola Negra" stars Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeau, Carlos González and Milo Quifesis, with Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close in supporting roles. It's an ambitious but wildly uneven two-and-a-half-hour Spanish drama that blends historical fiction, queer melodrama and meta-literary adaptation.

I didn't find the film particularly impressive. It plays like a Weinstein-era Oscar-bait vehicle, only in Spanish. It's technically well made, self-important in its messaging, and dull in stretches.

For a while I thought I was in the minority on this one. My reaction was decidedly mixed. The maximalist style is undeniably striking, especially in that bravura opening stretch, but the film cranks its emotions to eleven, and too often tips into melodrama and outright kitsch. And the heavy-handed messaging? I couldn't stand it.

Now there are signs the critical tide may slightly be turning. A reader just pointed out that the film's Metascore has dropped 10 points. It sat at 87 on Metacritic in September and now stands at 77. That's a notable slide for a supposed frontrunner, and it suggests critics' groups could be more divided on this one than festival audiences would have you believe.

None of that changes the much, though. With a stack of audience awards, and Netflix heavily prioritizing it this awards season, "La Bola Negra" is headed for a Best Picture nomination. Whether it can go further than that is another question.