Movie Review: In Spain’s ‘La Bola Negra,’ a gay drama with historical sweep

“La Bola Negra” has a classical core and a modern spirit. Directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, this sweeping epic glides back and forth between 1932, 1937 and 2017 to tell a story about gay men living in Spain in times of upheaval, suppression and reckoning.

It feels very grand and melodramatic, which works in its favor some of the time. And it’s not a surprise that there have been cries of best picture. That it cost only $15 million to make is all the more impressive. Netflix has even given it an unprecedented 47-day window in theaters (it’s available now) before its streaming run in December.

There is certainly a lot to savor in the film, not least of which is its historical consciousness and poetic portrait of homosexuality in both repressed and more permissive times. It was inspired partly by several pages of an unfinished play by Federico García Lorca — the Spanish playwright executed by fascist Nationalists in 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War — as well as Alberto Conejero’s “La piedra oscura” about Lorca and his romantic relationship with soccer player Rafael Rodríguez Rapún.

The film begins with a brutal shock in a small village in 1937, where the residents have gathered to welcome Italian troops during the Spanish Civil War. Glee turns to horror when the aircraft above begin firing on the villagers, slaughtering men, women and children. A lone trumpet player, Sebastián (played by the captivating artist Guitarricadelafuente in his film debut), manages to escape. But his only chance to survive is to join the Nationalist army. Sebastián is assigned to guard and try to get information out of a Republican leftist captive, Rafael Rodríguez Rapún (Miguel Bernardeau). He finds himself drawn to Rafael, who is quite handsome, and who tells him about his life in the arts before the war.

The second story focuses on Carlos (Milo Quifes, also in his film debut), a floppy-haired young man who hopes to be accepted as a member by a local social club in 1932. He stands hopeful in front of a group of older men who cast votes one by one — a black ball, from which the film derives its title, means a vote against Carlos; a white one is a vote for. And despite hailing from a prominent family, the black balls vastly outnumber the white ones. The reason, it’s implied, is that they suspect Carlos is gay. By far the most experimental of the three time frames, the rejection of Carlos is presented as a kind of original sin.

The third story centers on Alberto (Carlos González), an openly gay historian who receives unexpected news about an inheritance from a maternal grandfather he didn’t even realize was alive. Alberto’s life in Spain may be quite a bit different from that of Carlos, Sebastián and Rafael, but his ability to live openly does not come without baggage. His relationship with his mother, Teresa (Lola Dueñas), is fraught and strained. He resents her for being a mess (drugs, alcohol and general apathy toward him as a child), and she can’t fathom why he would be interested in her own father, whom she resents for abandoning her at a young age. There’s a lot of generational hurt and trauma to unpack, but Teresa is not well-drawn enough to help make this point.

These stories are building toward something that will connect them, a grand reveal perhaps a bit too buttoned-up to have authentic impact or appropriate catharsis. This is a film content to take its time to get where it’s going, including a diverting musical performance and monologue from Penélope Cruz (performing for the soldiers) and a somewhat perplexing cameo by Glenn Close as an American scholar.

“La Bola Negra” is certainly a feast of themes and performances that gets to the heart of the generational ripple effects of silence, shame and fascism. It’s also a remarkably edited film for how seamlessly it guides the audience through the jumbled timelines. Many sequences are beautifully hypnotic, too, but the stylistic flourishes and repetitiveness sometimes have the effect of weighing the already maximalist story down. Whether or not the film will go the distance for Netflix is hard to say, but it’s certainly a grand introduction, for U.S. audiences at least, to directors Calvo and Ambrossi, or as Spanish audiences already know well by their collective name, Los Javis.

“La Bola Negra,” a Netflix release in theaters now, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “violence, bloody images, graphic nudity, sexual content and language.” Running time: 157 minutes. Three stars out of four.