Penélope Cruz had been a muse to Los Javis — the moniker for Spanish filmmakers Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo — for years before they met for lunch to persuade her to play a singer (more a force of nature, really) in La Bola Negra, an electrifying sensation at Cannes that’s now Spain’s entry for best international feature film Oscar.
“I saw her in a clip of Jamón Jamón,” says Ambrossi, referring to Bigas Luna’s 1992 picture, in which Cruz appeared for the first time opposite her now-husband Javier Bardem. “I was young, and I thought, ‘Who is she?!’ ”
Calvo was similarly enchanted when he saw Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar’s 1999 Oscar winner All About My Mother. “She’s got that material of the stars,” he says. “When you put a camera in front of her, she can do anything, and she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing. There’s a power, there’s a force guiding her, and that’s amazing to see first-hand.”
Los Javis wanted Cruz for a small but pivotal role in their epic tale La Bola Negra, the intertwined story of three gay men who exist in three different time periods in Spain. In 1932, Carlos (Milo Quifes) is a young man in Grenada at a time when Spain is lurching uncomfortably towards an ever-increasing spiteful intolerance of homosexuality. In 1937, against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, Sebastián (Guitarricadelafuente) and Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau) are soldiers from opposing political divides brought closer by the conflict. And in 2017, Alberto (Carlos González) is a playwright from Madrid who engages with an eminent Federico Garcia Lorca scholar (played by another Hollywood star, Glenn Close, speaking fluent Spanish) in a storyline that links the characters in the prior timelines.
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Cruz’s character, one Nené Romero, performs for the troops in a series of beautifully choreographed, risqué numbers that the boys, far from home, lap up with hunger in their eyes. Los Javis say that Nené was inspired by La Fornarina, a cupletista, a Spanish singer of cuplé songs — bawdy numbers about “sex and drugs,” as Calvo explains it — who performed in theaters in Madrid around the turn of the last century.
Their research included the study of the erotic novels penned by Spanish writer and fashion designer Álvaro Retana, who also wrote lyrics for saucy songs of the type that Cruz performs in La Bola Negra. “They would be singing all over Madrid. They were so funny, they were unleashed — and they thought they were going to be free forever,” says Calvo when we meet in a suite at the swanky Corinthia Hotel during the London Film Festival. “But these singers and their gay friends, all the people in that circle, they were all incarcerated, persecuted, killed or disappeared. They’re forgotten, kind of. So we wanted to bring them back.”
Cruz was already a fan of Los Javis having been gripped by their outrageously captivating 2023 TV drama miniseries La Mesías, a hit for Moviestar+ in Spain, which is now available via Mubi in the UK, Canada Turkey, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia, and will soon be streaming in France. “They are so talented,” I recall an ecstatic Cruz telling me at the closing-night party in Cannes. “I saw their first television show Veneno as well,” she said, “and now they’ve won the directing prize at Cannes.”
The next time they work with Cruz, says Ambrossi, they plan to create “a whole film around her,” but that will be be after what they hope will be their next feature project, a movie that they claim will be “90% in English.” That movie, whenever it’s made, will likely have a larger budget than Los Javis spent on La Bola Negra. Ambrossi says that its roughly $15 million budget was tight but it’s “big for a Spanish movie.”
With time and the right people on La Bola Negra, Ambrossi adds, “we knew we could do it big. The scope is not always about big landscapes; it’s about how you position people, so you get the sense that it’s bigger, and taking the time to find the right locations, because these are all natural locations.“ They also insisted on making time for proper rehearsals before the 12-week shoot (“Because it’s a deep story and the actors needed time”).
Calvo explains that with the purse strings being so tight they had to find “creative solutions.” They didn’t, for example, have a room in which to shoot all the soldiers having dinner. “We’re like, “OK, then we’ll compose a beautiful shot with everyone outside with tables, and we’ll just imagine they went out to have dinner there,” he explains.
They also turned to “the godfathers of cinema,” as Calvo refers to such legendary directors as Thodōros Angelopoulos (Alexander the Great) and Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris), who, “with just with a landscape, mist and composing the humans in a proper way” were able to conjure up scenes of movie magic.
Working with the sublime cinematographer Gris Jordana — a frequent collaborator, as are the film’s editor, production designer, hair and makeup designer, costume designer, composer, and many other key creatives — Los Javis sought to bring some of that “godfathers of cinema” magic to their own film. “They’re part of our team,” Amborossi says. “We have been growing together. In every project we learn together. So that’s why the movie is so big, even if the budget is not. They put a lot of effort because it’s a collective experience. It’s like they put in their souls.”
“This is a movie about poetry,” says Calvo, “and there’s also a poetry in images. You don’t have to show everything. You can give something, and the viewer will leave it to their imagination.”
Ambrosssi jumps in. “If you don’t have the money, just don’t do it badly,” he says. “Cut it, and someone can talk about it in the next scene. Sometimes we needed a natural beauty location. For example, we didn’t have an office for the general lieutenant featured in the film, so we found an empty space with a nice view — you can see the sea — and we composed it with people and a table and a small framed picture of Franco, and that was it. And that’s not expensive.”
The main point, Calvo believes — as the likes of David Lean found while directing Lawrence of Arabia — is that it was necessary to find intimacy within such an epic story.
Los Javis were helped in that endeavor, Calvo adds, because the film is loosely based on Alberto Conejero’s one-act play La Piedra Oscura, which deals only with the relationship between Rafael and Sebastian, a play that is “so intimate and delicate” that they wanted to expand it into a triptych. ”Like, a big movie,” says Calvo, spreading his arms wide, “and an intimate movie at the same time. You have the fragility and the the war, so it’s about contrast. And it was so nice to create that, because sometimes it’s more difficult to create the relationship of Rafael and Sebastian, with all the tension, than a bombing scene.”
Countless meetings with key creatives were held in pre-production to map out the movie, and the more mistakes they made the better, because it meant they’d go out and get it right during the shoot, says Ambrossi. “It’s like, work, work, work, work, make a mistake, then try again,” he says, smiling. The work, however, didn’t feel like work. ”I always go back and say, ‘Oh, wow, it was the journey of our lives,’” Calvo declares.
Ambrossi contends that the film is proudly gay, whether that puts it in a niche box or not; it’s “a gay movie” and “I love to keep it that way,” he says. “I want people to have an experience that is universal. But I don’t want them to miss that it’s gay.”
It’s certainly unusual to see a gay story against the backdrop of war. Calvo cites Tarkovsky’s classic Ivan’s Childhood, Elem Klimov’s harrowing Come and See and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now as being amongst his favorite war movies. “So, I have those references,” he says, “but my emotion is another thing, and my sensitivity is what we’re portraying. Why shouldn’t I make a movie the same way the people that made war movies I admire made, but telling my own story and using my own feelings? For me, it was natural to just talk about myself through my references. And why can’t we have it all?”
Ambrossi laughs. “It’s great that we told everyone it is a gay film with — mostly — gay actors portraying gay characters, directed by gay people about the queer experience, and it’s hitting the No. 1 spot at the box office every single night in Spain. I like that. I think it’s cool, because it really represents two things; one, that the world is going in a direction that we are not always aware, and also that the industry has to understand that gay stories are not niche.”
La Bola Negra is a starting point for the next conversation, Ambrosssi continues, and that “once we try, once we prove them wrong, then we can have the conversation about universal stories. But we had to tell them, ‘You don’t have to change the lead and put a straight star in it to get the audience.’ They just go, “Ah, it’s a gay story.’”
Were they pressured in any way to compromise? “They don’t even try to do it with us, because we write, direct and produce. It’s our movie,” Ambrossi responds with gusto. He allows, however, that they encountered difficulties making the 2020 miniseries Veneno. “It was a show with trans actresses, and everyone was like, ‘You won’t find that many trans actresses to put in a show in Spain.’ And we were like, ‘We’ll do it.’ And we did.”
During their travels promoting the movie — at Cannes (where Los Javis shared the best director prize with Fatherland’s Pawel Pawlikowski), Telluride, Toronto (where it won the People’s Choice Award for best film), San Sebastián (where the film was honored with the festival’s Audience Award) and here in London — the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. “The feedback from non-gay people, non-LGBTQ people, is the same. This idea of wanting to be yourself, being rejected, a lot of women get that. It gets everyone. At some point, it’s about family, about motherhood, about brotherhood, about friendship. It’s a war movie. It’s about being different, but it’s about art and the power of art.”
Calvo, listening intently, jumps in, pointing out that the film is “about understanding and seeing the other as a human being. Which is, I think, important.”
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When it came to casting the male leads, they chose singer-musician Guitarricadelafuente because they were drawn to the “magnetism, the sadness” in his eyes. “He had to be the eyes of the viewer,” says Calvo, “and he has eyes that you can rely on, and he had this shyness, but also this bravery, this strength, but then this subtleness. We just knew it was for him.”
Ambrossi, meanwhile, hails Bernardeau (Elite) as being “one of the best of his generation.” “We needed his technique,” he explains, “because Guitarricadelafuente is new, so we needed the balance to play off each other.” The same goes for González. “He’s so flamboyant and fun in real life,” Ambrossi says. “Here, he’s doing a job that you cannot imagine. If you were to meet him, you would be like, ‘Are you the same person?’”
Indeed, I spoke with González at a soirée following a special screening of La Bola Negra at Tate Modern, and he was an absolute hoot. He vowed to do anything for the film “with its big black balls.” My eyes widened at that remark and our dirty laughter nearly got us turned outta the party.
As for Carlos, they were looking for Andalusian guys, and the moment they saw Quifes’ audition, they shut down the search.
The roles played by Guitarricadelafuente and Bernardeau are the heart of the film, providing its most tender, heartfelt moments. They met for the first time at rehearsals, where Guitarricadelfuente, who’d never acted before, says he felt “100 percent safe” because he was working opposite a professional actor. “It was a very special moment meeting Miguel,” he says.
Having someone like Miguel “really helped me out in this in this journey,” Guitarricadelafuente says. “There was something very special about the way that our characters grew up together, and the development of that intimacy, that way of nonverbal communication, those gestures that communicated so much. I’m grateful for the time that we spent at that room rehearsing.”
Los Javis were “democratic with us,” he notes, because “they let us express ourselves freely, and if there was maybe sometimes in the dialogue something that maybe didn’t resound that much in ourselves, they would say, ‘What would you say? What would you do?’ They let us roll on and magical things happened.”
Were they able to improvise? Bernardeau shakes his head and notes that it wasn’t so much improvisation because of how much thought went into every scene, what with how the three stories intertwine. “You need to be careful with what you change. There’s a lot of detail, so you cannot improvise. But they were very free with us in changing smaller stuff. I did feel very free to try different ways and paths into the scenes.”
I remember covering the film’s ecstatic 20-minute ovation at Cannes in the Grand Théâtre Lumière and watching the faces of this new generation of filmmakers and actors. Bernardeau was holding back tears. “I knew that once I start crying I would not stop,” he admits.
In front of him, he recalls, was the festival’s camera team “and Tilda Swinton clapping and looking at us.” Swinton introduced Bernardeau to her agent Christian Hodell, chief executive of Hamilton Hodell, who now represents him. Now the actor will soon be moving from Spain to live in London.
Guitarricadelafuente remembers looking up to the Lumière’s second tier to see so many young people who’d clearly connected with the film: “That made me feel as if we were at a concert.” He notes that he’s been astonished by how audiences in Spain have flocked to see the picture. Los Javis were known to young people, he says. “Like, there are people in my family that haven’t been to the cinema in 10 years. They feel like they’re missing out on something, because there’s been like a consensus between everybody to see it. It’s not a film about civil war, it’s not a film about Lorca. It’s is a film about life.”
It sure is.
Culturally, Spain’s on a roll. Singer-songwriter Rosalía took the International Artist of the Year at the Brit Awards; La Bola Negra won a major prize at Cannes; and, of course, Spain won the World Cup. Calvo beams a full-wattage smile. “We’re just getting out there.”
Netflix releases the film in theaters Friday in New York City and Los Angeles ahead of a wider release over coming weeks before debuting on streaming in the U.S. and Canada on December 2. Altitude opens the film in the UK on November 6.