‘Garcia Lorca’ Disappears in Jumble of Fact, Fiction

“The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca” is one of those films that is so artificial that it would be impossible to believe in it even if it were based wholly on facts instead of largely on fiction. It’s a ponderous period piece that tries halfheartedly to be a thriller while going for a glowing romantic look and mood that’s death to any form of suspense.

Overly complicated and further loaded down with trite characterizations and dialogue plus a leaden pace, it’s a hopelessly lifeless film despite yeoman efforts of Esai Morales, Andy Garcia, Edward James Olmos and others.

Director Marcos Zurinaga and his co-writers imagine a solution to the identity of who pulled the trigger of the weapon that killed the great Spanish playwright and poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was executed by fascist rebels in Granada at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

The one thing you can say for the film’s tediously complicated flashback-within-flashback structure is that it does allow Garcia to keep popping up often enough to give us a persuasive portrayal of Lorca as a dashing, witty, self-aware and courageous man--and to wish that he were in fact the center of the film.

The key character is instead Morales’ dull Ricardo Fernandez, a Granada native who as a teenager fled with his family to Puerto Rico with the ascent of Francisco Franco. Now it’s 1954, and Fernandez, a journalist struggling with writing a book about Garcia Lorca, his boyhood hero, decides he must return to Granada to try to solve his murder if he is ever to finish his project.

Breathtakingly naive at every turn, the doggedly sincere Ricardo stays with a family friend, a Franco colonel (Jeroen Krabbe) who displays a Third Reich medal in his study. Ricardo proceeds as if he were researching Cervantes instead of a martyr of the Spanish Civil War at a time when Franco had 21 years to go in his iron rule.

Olmos has some edge as a seeming Garcia Lorca enemy who may in fact have been a friend; Miguel Ferrer is a key bad guy; and Giancarlo Giannini is a taxi driver conveniently concerned with Ricardo’s welfare. Morales is game but Ricardo’s blandness--and dispiriting lack of smarts--prove taxing.

“The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca” means above all to evoke the tormented legacy of the Franco years, but many Spanish films have done this far better than this lackluster international co-production shot in English.

* MPAA rating: R, for bloody violence and a scene of sexuality. Times guidelines: The film’s brutality is too intense for children, even if accompanied by an adult.

‘The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca’

Esai Morales: Ricardo

Edward James Olmos: Lozano

Andy Garcia: Federico Garcia Lorca

Jeroen Krabbe: Col. Aguirre

A Triumph release of a Miramar Films-Esparza/Katz co-production with Enrique Cerezo, P.C. Director Marcos Zurinaga. Producer Enrique Cerezo. Producers Moctesuma Esparza, Robert Katz. Screenplay by Zurinaga & Juan Antonio Ramos and Neil Cohen. Based on the books “The Assassination of Garcia Lorca” and “Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life” by Ian Gibson. Cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia. Editor Carole Kravetz. Costumes Leon Revuleta. Production designer Gil Parrondo. Art directors Eduardo Hidalgo, Antonio Paton. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes.

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* In general release throughout Southern California.