History and the present collide in the grandiose experience La bola negra

In 1919, Different from the Others put gay experiences on German movie theater screens. Over a decade after its debut, Nazi's obliterated every copy of the project they could get their fascist palms on. Authoritarianism wiped out visual evidence of queer community and existences. Partial copies of the feature endure, but Different from the Others’ annihilation from the art canon encapsulates the difficulty of preserving queer history. These stories and lives have always existed. Widespread erasure and suppression don’t erase that reality.

It’s no wonder that wide swathes of queer cinema have fixated on preserving history and creating connections with the past. Documentaries like Barbara Forever and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed vividly explore the urgency of these missions. Narrative features like Velvet Goldmine, The People's Joker, Flee, and countless others, meanwhile, fixate on the past, present, and letting queer stories endure. Into this pantheon comes the historical epic La bola negra, courtesy of directorial duo Los Javis (consisting of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, who also penned the script with Alberto Conejero).

This creative pair deliver an absolutely towering Spain-set title that hops across three different time periods and a wide swath of pre-existing source material, namely Conejero's 2013 play La piedra oscura and Federico García Lorca's unfinished play La bola negra. One of the eras chronicled is 1917, where young Carlos (Milo Quifes) is riddled with anguish over whether or not he'll get into a local casino. Allegations of him being gay are plaguing him and his family's reputation, much to Carlos' frustration. Then there's Sebastián's (Guitarricadelafuente) 1937-set yarn. This trumpet player was the only survivor in his village from a grisly bombing.

Fleeing the carnage, he fakes his way into the Nazi-endorsed Nationalist army so that he can live to see another day. His "keep your head down" plans go sideways when leftist fighter Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau) is captured and Sebastián finds the man...absorbing. Irritable. A body he wants to caress and a soul he yearns to know. Finally, in 2017, there's Alberto (Carlos González), presumably a stand-in for co-screenwriter Alberto Conejero. He's a former playwright with a contentious relationship to his mother, Teresa (Lola Dueñas), who suddenly learns his grandfather's passed away. This discovery and some kind of “inheritance” this man left sends Alberto on a rabbit hole defined by the past.

La bola negra’s roots come from the stage. However, Los Javis and cinematographer Gris Jordana imbue this feature with staggering imagery that’s only feasible in cinema. Though it chronicles eras of chaotic war and modern domestic strife, nearly every La bola negra image is painterly. Sumptuous theatricality informs Los Javis and Jordana’s ingenious compositions. This quality is already remarkable in how many downright mythic images it produces. No wonder this film features Carlos and Sebastián walking or scrambling above marble statues of gods. These imagery impulses echo the grandiose aesthetic emanated by finely chiseled sculptures.  

However, this facet’s also effective in restoring grandeur to lives erased. The queer existences chronicled here are told to suppress themselves. Keep their personalities under wraps lest they “shame” their fathers or incur Nazi wrath. Even Alberto often feels inclined to withdraw himself thanks to his abusive mom. Los Javis and Jordana’s visual impulses, meanwhile, lather these lives in majestic tableaus as grand as their emotions and yearnings. Lives once existing solely through whispers and subtle glances now materialize on-screen in a masterful visual landscape proudly calling attention to itself. Rich sunlight cascading on two men tracing fingers on each other's bodies or a bright red flare speeding across a beach at nighttime are just two of the countless pronounced images La bola Negra delivers with maximum characterization and showmanship.

Also impressing on this front is this title’s channeling of Quo Vadis, Aida? in manifesting impactful empty spaces. Binding every disparate era explored here is this visual motif, which specifically materializes as voids in the top half of the frame. Quo Vadis, Aida?’s emptiness hauntingly suggested the lives lost to genocide. Here, vacant areas communicate both queer existences erased from society and the gulf between Carlos, Sebastián, and Alberto’s internal and external lives. Not only does this visual fixture lend insight into the characters, but it also produces incredibly memorable images infused with precise blocking. Gris Jordana’s cinematography is a gift that keeps on giving.

Unfortunately, a problem does frequently plague La bola negra. There’s this strange inclination to hammer home visually obvious elements with obtuse dialogue. Maybe it’s a relic of this film’s stage play roots and/or the screenwriters being theatre veterans. Whatever informs this problem, I kept wanting Los Javis to let the images do the talking. Yet another monologue relaying the title’s themes isn’t necessary when a single magnificent image proclaims a thousand words.

Inevitably, certain corners of La bola negra get the short thrift whilst the film juggles so many narrative beats. Alberto’s personal life, for instance, gets lost in the shuffle against the more towering Carlos and Sebastián’s early 20^th century woes. Biting off more than it can chew means La bola negra can’t quite reach the heights of other 2020s films hopping between disparate time periods, like The Secret Agent. Luckily, so much of the proceedings are a delectable enough feast to make these shortcomings less fatal than they’d normally be. On the one hand, the scripts eyes can be bigger than its stomach. On the other hand, holy moly, these painterly images!

Beyond those luscious images, La bola negra’s well-crafted charms are abundant. Case in point: Raül Refree's score is a creative collection of compositions. His tracks often contrast period-era imagery with distinctly modern instrumentation. This includes one beach-set World War II scene transpiring against what sounds like club tracks. These distinctive auditory flourishes blur the lines between the past and present, a perfect trait for this story. Meanwhile, the performances are largely excellent. Guitarricadelafuente gets the most to do with his tormented Sebastián work, and he certainly thrives with all this material. Penélope Cruz is also a wonder in her one-scene appearance as show woman Nené Romero. Her deftness alternating between Romero's boisterous stage persona and her more haunted everyday demeanor is astonishing.

107 years after Different from the Others, La bola negra has emerged to continue the legacy of time-fixated queer films. Admittedly, its polished sensibilities can’t erase certain shortcomings, namely over relying on dialogue. The ragged edges, though, still speak to the La bola negra creative team’s impactful audacity. Such audacity produces a David Lean-style epic championing lives quietly erased and understated yearning communicated in glances or alleyways. In one of her final lines, Romero notes that queerness and challenging gender norms are about embracing everything that’s possible. In its most towering images and evocative sequences, La bola negra vividly communicates such infinite possibilities.

La bola negra begins its U.S. theatrical run on October 16.