‘La Bola Negra’: An epic of gay men’s lives in Spain over 100 years

Gay directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s “La Bola Negra” sculpts a monument from kitsch. In the guise of paying tribute to one of Spain’s greatest writers, Los Javis, as the duo call themselves, bite off far more than they can handle. Juggling three timelines, the film fumbles them. Although its 160-minute runtime feels elongated, “La Bola Negra” plays as though it were an edited version of a six-hour limited series. “La Bola Negra” makes a point about the erasure of gay men’s lives. It gives a lot of these ideas to American scholar Isabel (Glenn Close), who specializes in studying Spain. The film itself picks up gay writer Gabriel Garcia Lorca’s legacy, expanding upon a four-page fragment he could not finish because he was killed. Rather than a straightforward imagination of the story Lorca wasn’t able to write, “La Bola Negra” pushes forward. It wonders how a present-day gay man might see himself in this story. Lorca’s play, from which “La Bola Negra” takes its title, is just one of the film’s sources. It’s inspired by another piece written for the theater: Alberto Conjero’s “La Piedra Obscura.” (Conjero and Los Javis worked together on the script.) In one of its three timelines, adapted from Lorca, Carlos (Milo Quifes) applies for membership in a Granada casino, only to be blackballed due to rumors about his sexuality. Worried about the family’s social standing, his father urges him to stay in the closet. The other strands involve Sebastian (Guitarricadelafuente, a pop singer making his acting debut) and Rafael (Miguel Bernandeau), two soldiers in 1937, and present-day writer Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez). Rafael, who’s based on a real person, had been Lorca’s lover. After the destruction of his village, Sebastian gets drafted by the Nationalist army. He’s placed in charge of Rafael, who’s captured after being wounded in battle. As Sebastian guards Rafael, recuperating in a military hospital, his attraction grows, if only on an unconscious level. 80 years later, Alberto can’t find a direction in life. He resents his cocaine-addled mother, who has never treated him as her priority. He starts to wonder about his late grandfather’s secrets. “La Bola Negra” is too timid to dive into the power differences between Sebastian and Rafael. The direction eroticizes Rafael’s wounds. Sebastian sees him nearly nude, his body stitched together and leaking blood. This awakens something he can’t quite name. The film does everything it can to gloss over the fact that they’re on opposite political sides. It conjures up a Romeo/Juliet narrative without accounting for the difficulty of crossing the divide. Some of the film’s historical background might be more apparent to Spanish viewers, but “La Bola Negra” does as little as possible to establish the political conflicts of the 1930s. Sebastian is relieved of responsibility for authoritarianism because he didn’t decide to join the cause. (His side fought to overthrow the Second Republic and install General Francisco Franco, who became Spain’s dictator from 1939 to 1975.) A sensitive spirit, he doesn’t seem engaged with politics, even when they dictate the course of his life. This innocence makes it easier for “La Bola Negra” to romanticize the tragedy that follows. Despite a glimpse of a truck full of mutilated corpses, the film’s happier with shirtless soldiers frolicking outdoors. Even a violent conclusion is given the most upbeat treatment possible. The film’s melodramatic overload collides with its prestige ambitions. Los Javis, as the duo call themselves, have taken the material of an epic novel and scrambled it. Music covers up the seams, passing from one timeline to another. While the section about Carlos is the most underdeveloped, neither the 1937 or 2017 storylines get the degree of work they need. The editing jumps too quickly between them, as though it were afraid spectators might reach for their phones. “La Bola Negra” never unites the high stakes of Sebastian and Rafael’s relationship with Alberto’s search for his roots. For all its surface ambition, it puts a difficult history to reassuring ends, setting aside the troubling questions it raises. “La Bola Negra” | Directed by Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi | In Spanish with English subtitles | Netflix | Opens October 16th at the Angelika Film Center and Paris Theater