Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the team known as Los Javis, La Bola Negra depicts the lives of several gay men in Spain over three separate historical timelines:
In 1932, young Carlos (Milo Quifes) is blackballed — hence the film’s title — from a social club over his sexuality.
In 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Guitarricadelafuente and Bernardeau play, respectively, a soldier and the prisoner of war he must guard, as their affections blossom across political lines.
In 2017, historian Alberto (Carlos González) struggles to figure out how the two preceding tales intersect, stumped until an academic (played by American actress Glenn Close in a brief cameo) steps in to help.
My Book:
Gay Directors, Gay Films? By Emanuel Levy (Columbia University Press)
The Title: Black Ball
The plot is inspired by “La bola negra,” an incomplete work by the famous gay poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, who was assassinated in 1936. Only four pages have been preserved, with the title “the Black Ball,” which alludes to the form of rejection of young gay man when attempting to join a social club in Granada.
The story of Spain’s fall into rigid dictatorship under Franco was familiar to the actors. “It’s something that has touched everybody — our great-grandparents were all involved,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “It’s common in our DNA in Spanish society.”
But to make the history feel real and immediate, they had to learn how to behave like soldiers. “We received military preparation — how to hold a rifle,” says Guitarricadelafuente, “My character fights only reluctantly, and would rather be playing his trumpet than be in combat. He’s naive, but not stupid. Playing the trumpet is what gives him hope for the future, that one day, he’ll go to Madrid and be a musician.”
Indeed, an encounter with a vivacious lounge singer, played by Oscar winner Penélope Cruz, in a touching scene at the heart of the movie, convinces Sebastián that the world could be broader and brighter.
The movie scored big at Cannes Festival earlier this year, earning a 20-minute standing ovation, winning a shared best director prize.
It also became the first non-English-language film since The Artist, the French silent comedy of 2011, to win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, a good indicator for what may play well and win awards in Hollywood. La Bola Negra is now perceived as the major Oscar contender, which might challenge Christopher Nolan’s historical blockbuster epic The Odyssey.
If the film scores at the Oscars, in terms of nominations and awards, it will be a landmark for foreign-language (non-English) cinema, for the mega streamer Netflix, and for queer artists, in front and behind the cameras
The two actors, not yet known in the U.S., are about to get famous. Although Bernardeau doesn’t identify as queer, Guitarricadelafuente is among several gay actors playing gay characters in the current Oscar race.
Queer Oscar Race?
The frontrunners this year include Andrew Scott (the Irish out gay actor, best kn0wn for the TV series Fleabag (2019) and Ripley (2024)), for the upcoming biopic Elsinore, in which he portrays gay Scottish actor Ian Charleson (Chariots of Fire) and his performances as Hamlet in the National Theatre in the final months of his life, while fatally ill from AIDS.
And then there’s the gay Jewish comedian Jordan Firstman of Club Kid (which played to great acclaim at Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard series), who directed and starred in the dramedy about a washed-up underground party promoter whose life takes an unexpected turn when he is forced to care for Arlo, a 10-year old son he never knew he had.
That makes this year’s Oscar race even gayer than 2016, when Barry Jenkins’ lyrical queer African American drama, Moonlight, beat out against all odds the musical La La Land, which was expected to win Best Picture.
They now hope to appeal to audiences of all ages and walks of life: “Older generations, which would have been scandalized by this 20 years ago, are gonna understand it right now,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “And, of course, younger viewers, because it’s really a transcendental love story that everybody can feel linked to.”
“I don’t like movies that treat me like I’m dumb,” says Calvo, who’s 35, “The audiences now are smart enough. When I see a disaster film like Chernobyl, I may not get some nuclear stuff, but I’m in it. And the same goes for a gay story, there’s no difference.”
“We made this movie for the big screen,” says Ambrossi, age 42. “We shot it in 35mm. People can experience the movie as we wanted. But with Netflix, you can rewatch and rewatch— you can see all of Penélope Cruz’s numbers again and again and again,”
Netflix’s acquisition deal was announced on the last day of Cannes. For a streamer that has earned Oscars — but never the best picture — for directors like Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog), Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) and Guillermo del Toro (Pinocchio), La Bola Negra may represent its best chances yet at winning Oscar’s top prize.
Two years ago, the company had a different Cannes prize-winner about queerness, Emilia Pérez, told in the Spanish language. As is well known, the incendiary and racist old tweets of lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón, had negative impact on its Oscar prospects, despite a record number of nominations.
The directors are now eager to get global recognition: Los Javis previously created the biographical TV series Veneno, about trans Spanish singer Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, which aired on HBO Max in 2020. In Spain, they’re famous as judges on “Drag Race España,” and became the subject of gossip for their romantic relationship. T couple broke up during the making of “La Bola Negra,” but they have remain creative partners.
They hope that La Bola Negra, which is more direct in depicting gay sensuality and the male body, can push boundaries further than other queer pictures, such as the 2005 Brokeback Mountain. “There’s no better way to get people to understand things than art and movies, they’re really good vehicle for creating empathy — because when you cry with someone, you’re bonded to that story, to that person, to that community.”
Indeed, the message that La Bola Negra is trying to make is that the contemporary understanding of queerness isn’t a historical constant — that it was something learned, and fought for, by people following their hearts and sacrificing their lives, despite strong opposition.
