La Bola Negra

It is so gratifying to be in the presence of a film that attempts, for better or for worse, to tackle a subject that to this day remains highly controversial. The Spanish Civil War, which ended in 1939 with the victory of Francisco Franco, and imposed a fascist dictatorship in Spain until his death in the early 1970's, left an indelible mark in the psyche of the Spanish nation. To this day it is a subject best not approached in everyday conversation. It is the shame of a nation that still prefers to leave the memory of the war hidden in secret thoughts. It is significant, however, that it yielded so many important artistic reactions throughout the course of the conflict, and during its aftermath, from Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica to Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," to Victor Erice's film The Spirit of the Beehive. Every generation seems to find a reason to resurrect this clash that set brother against brother in Spain in the late 1930's, and find a new angle that might peel away the layers of history and attempt an explanation for the cause that led to those bloody years that tore a nation apart.

Known collectively as "Los Javis," the directing/writing team of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi have taken up the challenge for our times. Their angle is Spain's stifling of queer expression, both under pre-fascist rule and during the post-war Franco regime. Binding all of this together is the central, pivotal figure of the poet Federico García Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet and playwright, who was murdered by Franco's Nationalists soldiers, and who left behind an unfinished play called La Bola Negra (The Black Ball).

The film consists of three parts: the story of Sebastián (played by Spanish singer Guitarricadelafuente) whose town is mistakenly attacked in 1937 by Mussolini's air force (shades of "Guernica") and survives only to join Franco's Nationalists in order to save his neck. He meets Rafael, a wounded POW Republican soldier, who he is supposed to guard. Soon enough there erupts in Sebastián an unspoken sexual desire for the wounded Rafael. The second story takes place in the city of Granada where an elegant young man named Carlos applies for membership to an exclusive club, and is blackballed because there are rumors in the town that he is a homosexual. The third story takes place in 2017 and it revolves around another queer young man named Alberto, who is a historian, and whose grandfather has left him something mysterious in his will. Eventually, Los Javis use this modern-day section to gather all the stories together. It is a structure not unlike that of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. The only difference being that the silent film opted for a theme and variation approach to history's narrow-mindedness, while La Bola Negra allows the contemporary story to tie the loose ends of the earlier historical narratives.

Brilliant is the participation of Penélope Cruz as a singing entertainer who offers Franco's troops the type of bawdy show that elicits a wave of testosterone-filled reactions from the men, something reminiscent of the Playboy bunny section in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Cruz is quite memorable and charming as a character filled with the DNA of a Marlene Dietrich suggestively strutting on the stage of the Blue Angel. On the other side of the spectrum, during the contemporary story, we find Glenn Close, who gives a brave, bilingual performance as an American historian giving a lecture in Madrid on Lorca's homosexuality. While at first it might seem odd to feature an American character as a Lorca specialist, we only have to think of Ian Gibson, the Irish Hispanist who wrote the definitive biography of Lorca, as well as "The Assassination of Federico García Lorca," a volume that was banned by the Franco regime when it was first published.

Although Lorca does not get his own narrative section, he does appear in a kind of coda, shot in black-and-white, whose purpose is to tie more loose ends. It is arguably a section that could have been left out. At the very beginning of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra thunderous chords spell out the name Agamemnon, Elektra's murdered father. The character never appears in the opera, but his presence is there throughout. The same can be said of Lorca in this film. Why dramatize him when his memory is already permeating the entire film. 

One of the catchphrases of the film is "este país tiene demasiadas historias de amor enterradas en los campos" (This country has too many love stories buried in the fields). The phrase alludes to the silencing of LGTBQ+ individuals in the same way that clubs use the black ball to exclude individuals who do not conform to their view of normality. The word buried is also very powerful since Lorca body was dumped in an unmarked grave. To this day the site of his remains are unknown. With this ambitious, monumental film Los Javis are unearthing the past and looking for a ray of truth that might either finally put to rest the specter of the Spanish Civil War, or begin a new debate from a fresh angle.