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A two-and-a-half hour historical epic so good, you almost wish it was twice as long. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to describe La Bola Negra as both a landmark work belonging to a thrilling new wave of queer cinema and an old-fashioned foreign-language breakout sensation. Written and directed by brilliant Spaniards Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, aka Los Javis, it’s surely Oscars bound. Hopefully Hollywood types will take note of what can be achieved with $15 million and boundless ambition.
Majorly expanding on Alberto Conejero’s 2015 play The Dark Stone, La Bola Negra (‘the black ball’) spans three timelines. In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes), the young gay scion of an affluent Granada family, wants to join an exclusive club. Its committee vote by choosing a marble ball: white for yes; black for no. The film’s title will tell you how Carlos’s sexuality is viewed in this closed-off Catholic society.
In 2017 Madrid, twentysomething historian and blocked writer Alberto (Carlos González) is dealing with a lack of purpose, a spiky mum and waning self-esteem. His daily existence, lit up by occasional throwaway Grindr trysts, is sparked into life when the death of his grandfather sends him to northern Spain in pursuit of a mysterious inheritance.
But it’s in the immaculate middle section set in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War that Los Javis’ tongue-in-cheek aspirations to ‘make the gayest war movie ever’ come into full focus. La Bola Negra opens with an operatically violent sequence that might have spilled out of Apocalypse Now (an influence here). Dreamy young trumpeter Sebastián stumbles out of it and into the arms of Nationalist troops who enlist him, take him to a barracks and assign him to guard a wounded Republican officer Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau).
A film as sensual and grand as this doesn’t come along often
Something is soon stirring between the tousled, sensitive Sebastián and the brooding, Adonis-like Rafael. They bond over the work of Federico García Lorca, the great Spanish playwright and poet whose theatre company Rafael had belonged to before the war, sharing moments of hushed desire as violence brews anew outside.
There’s a thread that connects this triptych of tales, of course, and it pays off in swooningly emotional style. Even with Alberto Gutiérrez’s intuitive editing, there’s a lot to take in: hypnotic, Bob Fosse-esque musical sequences, one featuring Penélope Cruz in a platinum blonde wig; panoramic dream sequences; a Spanish-speaking Glenn Close. There’s much that will come into sharper relief on a second viewing.
But a film as romantic, sensual and visually grand as this doesn’t come along often – an LGBTQ+ masterpiece that speaks to us all about the power of art in times of heartache.
In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Nov 6.