If you’re like me, and you’re not a Spaniard nor particularly familiar with the Spanish literature it’s based on, then directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo’s new film, “La Bola Negra,” probably raises two key questions.
One: what does its title mean? That question is easily answered by Google: “The Black Ball.” This raises the second question: what does a black ball have to do with an award-winning, LGBTQ+ historical epic? That question is answered during a montage about 15 minutes into the movie, in which one character, a young man named Carlos living in 1932 Granada, Spain, is denied induction into a prestigious casino club for his homosexuality.
As the haughty club board’s “No” votes are counted via small black balls rolling into a counter, each colliding like an emphatic gunshot, the film energetically cross-cuts between its other two protagonists: Sebastián, crowded on a musty truck after being shipped off with the fascist Nationalist army in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, and Alberto, a historian in 2017, having sex with a Grindr hookup.
And if that sounds overwhelming and vaguely obnoxious, then it’s because those two words define “La Bola Negra” just as much as those click-clacky little black balls do.
That forceful yet tactless early montage is representative of the direction by “Los Javis,” as they’re known. In spite of their ability to convincingly breathe life each time period, they convey no personality or particular worldview in doing so: just the dramatic frames necessary to convince viewers they’re seeing a capital-“i”-important movie.
Based on the film’s stateside Netflix distribution and the duo’s win for Best Director at Cannes Film Festival, they’ve generally succeeded. The movie has already been locked in as Spain’s submission for Best International Feature at the Oscars, where it’s also likely to pick up a Best Picture nomination.
But, like many of the fast-paced, overwrought films the Academy likes to award, “La Bola Negra” is a film with a lot running across its frames but very little running through its mind.
Aesthetically, every image feels overstuffed: whether it be flashy set dressings or shots crowded with extras simply for the sake of having done so, cinematographer Gris Jordana and editor Alberto Gutiérrez seem determined to suffocate their viewers, perhaps with the goal of capturing the characters’ struggles. They succeed, but the result is apathy, not empathy.
Each of the three leads never rises beyond two-dimensional tropes: Carlos (Milo Quifes) as the closeted gay man held back by a repressive society, Sebastián (singer Guitarricadelafuente) as the young, unwilling soldier in a hellish war and Alberto (Carlos González) as the perpetually-frustrated contemporary gay writer seeking for something deeper than his friends’ partying lifestyle.
This does not mean the ethos behind these characters is not worthwhile, but still: cliché me once, shame on me; cliché me three times in the span of 10 minutes, and you’d really better have something worth saying. Despite all its historical gravitas, “La Bola Negra” does not.
The connection between the three time periods is revealed near the end of the film, and while I won’t spoil what is an already quite-predictable story beat, I will say that the film’s grand message is ultimately: “LGBTQ+ history is very important.”
That’s a point that few would disagree with, but it’s also a point that takes about two seconds to convince me of; the film’s 155-minute runtime and eight-decade time jump feel gratuitously oversized on a message that is second nature to anyone with a functioning moral compass, much less someone who sat down in a theater to watch an explicitly gay film.
This applies to the way “La Bola Negra” handles fascism, too. There’s one scene in Sebastián’s era where a group of soldiers hang out on a nighttime beach, shooting off fireworks above the water as they perform Sieg Heil-like Nationalist salutes and toss around a floating body in the water, drunk on bloodthirsty masculinity.
It’s a scene that feels straight from “Apocalypse Now”’s sobering depiction of American troops’ barbaric actions in Vietnam — only here, we get Guitarricadelafuente’s character sitting to the side looking glum to remind you that fascist salutes and corpse desecration are, in fact, a bad thing. In case you forgot, I guess.
The story’s simplicity is more than annoying; it’s actively reductive. “La Bola Negra” purports to valorize LGBTQ+ stories from throughout Spanish history — Glenn Close appears in a minor role to point-blank tell us as much — but all Los Javis actually do is flatten them out.
Despite casting a wide claim on LGBTQ+ stories throughout Spain’s history, the film would have you believe that there is really only one LGBTQ+ story that these men keep living out in slightly different forms.
In a supposedly tragic scene, Sebastián reads a poem he finds, written to express the doomed love that two completely separate characters felt for each other, and the film once again cross-cuts to its other characters during the voiceover. I don’t care if they are connected, as we learn in the twist: are we seriously meant to believe that this poem means something to our other characters simply because… they’re all gay men?
It’s bad enough that this is yet another story about gay characters that reduces them to their suffering; it’s even worse that it tries to convince us that three men who differ wildly in situation are defined by the same singular suffering.
I won’t call “La Bola Negra” a “gay movie for straight people” because, for among other reasons, I’m not gay, but it’s certainly not a film for anyone looking for nuance.
What if there was a gay man on that beach, Sieg heiling it with the bros? What if he had deeper motivations beyond swoon-worthy forbidden love for a hunky prisoner in his care? What if his story didn’t have a clear-cut, cathartic connection to the present day for me, in my plush theater seat, to feel comforted by?
For a film that is supposedly using raw, visceral period drama to emphasize an important issue, Los Javis’ effort feels like a boilerplate commodification of trauma with only tiny hints of personality peeking through.
I can appreciate that this film’s simple message may mean more for those in tune with its Spanish origins — and if any LGBTQ+ people watch this and feel seen, then more power to them. But given rising efforts to silence and oppress LGBTQ+ voices worldwide in recent months, “La Bola Negra”’s contribution to the conversation becomes more notable — and even more disappointing. Hell, those Spanish Nationalist salutes were seen in an anti-migrant rally in Madrid last month; in light of that, this toothless critique plays like self-satire.
For anyone looking for some kitschy drama with a progressive sheen, I recommend “La Bola Negra,” which you’ll soon find languishing in the ‘LGBTQ+ Voices’ section at the bottom of your Netflix page.
For anyone looking for a truly groundbreaking gay period piece, I recommend Luca Guadagnino’s 2024 must-watch film “Queer,” which rises beyond forced tropes to create something entirely original and beautiful.
For anyone still unconvinced about the need to distinguish the two, I recommend taking a good, hard look around.
Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.
