La Bola Negra
Los Javis historical epic is a poetic modern classic
Ambition can often be the enemy of execution, especially in cinema. History’s pages are strewn with the ambitions of directors and their “grand masterpieces” becoming their own undoing, the most famous being Michael Cimino with Heaven’s Gate (1980)). Yet when such ambitions are pulled off, as with Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), the result is a transcendent classic. Such is the result with los Javis’ latest film, attempting to encompass queer erasure, historical repression, and the timeless power of art in Spain with La Bola Negra (2026).
La Bola Negra is a story spanning various characters in different points of time. In 1932, the young Carlos (Milo Quifes) wants to become a member of the exclusive high-class casino in Granada, but is rejected for his homosexuality. In 1937 a village trumpet player, Sebastian (Guitarricadelafuente) supporting the right-wing forces in the Spanish Civil War is tasked with standing guard over a wounded prisoner of the opposing side Rafael (Miguel Bernardeu), who holds a poem in his pocket. In the modern day, frustrated playwright-turned-historian Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez) inherits a letter and manuscript from his grandfather, a man he never met nor knew was alive. Through it all, the shadow of the famous poet Federico Garcia Lorca (Alberto Cortes) hangs over each story.
Los Javis (the artistic name for co-directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo) won the Best Director prize at Cannes with this film, and while they had previously ventured into film with the campy Holy Camp! (2017), it was in TV that they cut their teeth and became master storytellers. They delved into dramatic queer stories with Veneno (2020), following a real-life trans icon, and also created the iconoclastic Spanish comedy Paquita Salas (2016-2019), which ridicules office culture. While the directing duo was appreciated in Spain for their flair and joy in their projects, I would not have pegged them to take on a historical epic rooted in the Spanish Civil War. Yet los Javis showcase a versatility so vast, I feel whiplash just from looking at their IMDb page.
La Bola Negra, like many great films about the Spanish Civil War, focuses on the inability that Spain has in confronting its past, and as such, a reason why it is unable to truly move on. It is true that historically this is rooted in more complicated reasons than simply not wanting to face the past: the “pacto del Olvido” which was an agreement to let bygones be bygones in the 1970s, allowed Spain to transition peacefully from a dictatorship to a democracy. Likewise, laws in the 2000s and 2010s sought to bring national resources into unearthing mass graves and catalogue the horrors that occurred during the darkest days of Spain in the 20thcentury. Yet looking at the shames of one’s history is a difficult endeavor, and not a linear one, wherein the publishing of a certain event does enough to educate everyone in the present and future. History is an effort that must be taught and sustained throughout. One need only look at Germany, which has undergone decades of educating on the horrors of WWII and who yet are seeing a rising far-right party (AFD) winning elections and leading in national polls. Likewise, in Spain there is a panicked reaction of wanting to move on or otherwise castigate historians whose recounting isn’t “patriotic” enough, and who don’t do a good enough job at showing “both sides” of the Civil War.
This context is what is addressed within La Bola Negra, which in its pure ambition addresses the dangers of repressing these stories and truths that have been festering within the national memory and eating away at the psyche like an old family secret or trauma being kept down. At the end of the day, if you are repressing a memory, a part of your identity, you are repressing your entire self. This is illustrated by los Javis through brilliant character work, focusing specifically on the relationships and a broken/repressed love between men.
La Bola Negra is a cautionary tale of sorts, taking inspiration from an unfinished work by Lorca of the same name, where los Javis interpret that it is a tragedy not to live as oneself, not to use your time to express your truth while you have the opportunity. It may come off as an incredibly cheesy message when read, but is threaded beautifully with a technical craft that will leave you like a puddle of tears in your seat by the time the credits roll.
Los Javis showcase an adeptness at the technical elements of cinema that make the film truly transcend being a story to become an experience. While the three storylines appear disparate at first, they are slowly woven in with dexterity, like a much more poetic Love Actually (2003). Yet los Javis utilize a patient rhythm and a camera that frames each shot like a live tableau, filled with spectacular lighting and use of color and space. You could honestly pause the film at any moment and sit in marvel at the beautiful composition before you, playing with focus, lines of sight, and shadows in a way that would make Caravaggio blush. Los Javis also utilize their camera as a critical tool in how the watch their characters, turning the male gaze tools that have frequently populated cinema screens into a queer male gaze, a male gayze if you will. This gaze is one that is different from the way that female directors have flipped it onto men, because the male gayze is one of a man looking at another man, and as such not only showcasing desire, but a mirror of oneself. This is a gaze not needing to consume an object as with the patriarchal male gaze, but looking at a much more pure and authentic appreciation, where desire is a wish of wanting share in passion and beauty rather than possessing it.
La Bola Negra doesn’t take on a typically structured approach to its narrative; its editing is much more fluid, with sounds and dialogue bleeding from one sequence set in the past to one in fiction and another in the future. At points you are jarred with a cut from a military ward in the 1930s to a DJ in the 2020s. It is in taking inspiration in Lorca’s prose and style that los Javis craft this atemporal spell over the film, where all things are occurring simultaneously and “invading” the times and spaces of each other.
La Bola Negra brings together an eclectic cast that feels drawn randomly from a hat. Guitarricadelafuente is a famous musician taking on his acting debut, Julio Torres is better known for his magical realist HBO shows in the US, Penelope Cruz is a Spanish icon, Antonio de la Torre is the most prolific Spanish actor working today, Lola Dueñas is a veteran of Almodovar and Amenabar, Glenn Close is an American classic, and Miguel Bernardeu is a soap opera alumni. It is a showcase of the ambition los Javis brought to La Bola Negra and which could have turned out as a disaster, and yet proves to be a complete triumph. A few minutes in and the casting completely melts away from your mind as you only see the characters themselves, indelibly brought to life with a flawed pain by the performers. Guitarricadelafuente is a particular revelation, who comes off as if he’s been acting for decades, using a nuance and a reserved performance of a man whose guilt, confusion, and desire are all fighting within him. Every role while seemingly random in its casting is carefully calibrated. Close and Cruz have small roles yet are crucial at illustrating important narrative and emotional beats, leaving their presences as essential cameos to complete the story being told.
In the end, La Bola Negra is a film whose richness, poetic beauty, and narrative complexity make it rather hard to breakdown into an easy and clean-cut review. Los Javis, with an infinite amount of ambition, pull of this modern classic and then some. It is wont to leave you overwhelmed in your seat, considering both a macrohistorical perspective on memory, truth, and queer erasure as well as a deeper personal one as to what part of yourself are you repressing and what freedom and time are you losing by doing so?
9.2/10
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