Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra (The Black Ball)” opens with a 1937 massacre and moves through three interwoven stories of queer desire, repression, and memory—thrilling in its filmmaking, uneven in its pacing, and ultimately tender about the
When “La Bola Negra (The Black Ball)” begins in 1937, it doesn’t ease you into its world. It throws you into a village where musician Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente) watches his entire family and community get slaughtered by aerial gunfire. Then he does something that feels both impossible and unbearably human: he climbs through the bodies of the dead.
The escape sequence doesn’t just set the tone—it signals that filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi. the directing duo known as Los Javis. are playing with time and expectation. What follows over the next two and a half hours keeps breaking free from linear storytelling. transforming past and present into a space where lovers flirt and fight with each other. The result is a film that feels both old and new. packed with ingenious technical marvels and sequences that rank among cinema’s best—while still carrying a very classical devotion to honoring those who came before.
Sebastián’s first climb past horror leads to a felled sculpture pierced with arrows. Porcelain white. shaped like idols to the Greek gods. it’s a deliberately clever image: Sebastián. with his dark skin. Adonis features. and bloodied body. doesn’t use it to worship. He uses the arrows—like bouldering grips—to force a way out of the hell around him. The mythology on screen is being rewritten as you watch.
From there, the film turns to the reason punishment arrives in the first place. Sebastián was loyal to Nationalist Italian rebels. The government responds with brutality. and against his will he’s forced to join the fascist army that caused his village’s massacre. Within the army. he meets leftist prisoner Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau). someone he’s tasked to befriend so Rafael might give up sensitive information. But Rafael’s presence doesn’t just complicate Sebastián’s mission—it’s tied to Sebastián’s queer awakening. Sebastián tries to hide his blossoming feelings, his marching orders, and his hatred for the regime he’s serving.
That’s story one. Story two belongs to Carlos (Milo Quife). whose spiraling begins with one inciting action: he’s denied access to his father’s casino after rumors about his homosexuality. The film’s title comes from the casino members’ voting process for inducting new members—support is represented by a white ball. while a black ball is negative. The black ball imagery arrives in a clever, surreal, snow-chilled sequence the film doesn’t hand over in neat explanation. It lands with the force of an internal verdict. and the feeling recalls Sisyphus and his boulder—the way rejection can keep rolling back into your life. getting larger. heavier. and more monstrous.
Story three shifts to historian Alberto (Carlos González). who learns that his mother’s father—someone he knew very little about—left him something that becomes the connective tissue tying the triptych together. While the other two stories focus on homosexual desire under siege. Alberto’s path is touchingly framed as reverence for the sacrifices of the past. The film doesn’t deny discrimination in the present. but it makes another point clear through its structure: each generation has split its own share of blood to make the next one better.
Alberto’s story functions like giving the elders flowers. And the flowers are bright. Nené (Penélope Cruz) and Isabelle (Glenn Close) appear in brief but substantial roles—Nené as a nightclub performer. Isabelle as a historian—yet their performances anchor the emotional movement of the film across its three time periods.
The film’s editing choices help the past and present refuse to sit apart. Clever cross-cutting, shaped by editor Alberto Gutiérrez, lets connections bloom without turning the structure into pure montage. But the stitching isn’t always smooth. Sometimes Gutiérrez can be a bit too zealous in forcing links from one story to another. stopping narrative momentum just long enough to press a broader point. And within that rhythm. Sebastián and Alberto’s stories feel more fleshed out than Carlos’. which can make the screen-time dedication feel uneven.
Even so, Gutiérrez’s work is especially sharp in one place: Alberto’s tense relationship with his mother. His mother holds anathema toward her father, who left her when she was young and supported the fascist regime. She notes—wryly and sharply—his violent disapproval if he ever found out Alberto was gay. Reality, the film suggests through its cuts, was more complicated than easy labels allow. Sebastián was part of the regime. but he also tried to resist in his own way. and he was queer himself. That nuance isn’t known to Alberto’s present relatives. Yet the film’s structure turns those gaps into a rebuttal of easy judgment: while we may never know the fullness of those who have passed. it doesn’t mean they didn’t live lives of nuance. pain. sorrow. and love like the rest of us.
Near the film’s end. a character puts it plainly: “This country has too many love stories buried in the fields.” Close’s Isabelle—paraphrased in the film’s dialogue—frames remembrance as something active: “The work to remember is a way to avenge death.” History. she says. is not about facts but the people who made those facts.
Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi shape “La Bola Negra (The Black Ball)” like a shovel and a garden at once—cinema as a way to unearth and as new soil for stories that deserve to take root. There are still terrains out there to explore. the film seems to argue. and they’re waiting for the compassionate and vivacious eye of directors like Ambrossi and Calvo. The harvest is plenty. The workers are few. And this film, rousing and uneven, invites you to start digging—because you never know what treasures you’ll find.
La Bola Negra The Black Ball Javier Calvo Javier Ambrossi Los Javis queer cinema Penélope Cruz Glenn Close Miguel Bernardeau Guitarricadelafuente Carlos González Milo Quife Alberto Gutiérrez