It has not been explained enough that the second most important author in Spanish literature is gay

Special correspondent to CannesIn the last poem of the Sonetos del amor oscuro, Federico García Lorca wrote: “You will never understand what I love you / because you sleep in me and you are asleep”. To Javier Calvo, the upper half of the artistic duo known as the Javis, the letter or at the end of dormido. “I read it as a teenager and thought it was a typo, but no, it said Nor is it that the Javis are talking exactly about Lorca's homosexuality in the film they presented this Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival, or at least not directly. La bola negra is a song to the right to love freely that interweaves three stories set in Spain in different eras: Granada in 1932, a Francoist military camp in Cantabria in 1937, and Madrid in 2017. Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo are signing their most ambitious film, a historical melodrama that starts from the Lorquian imaginary to build a transgenerational saga about dissident sexualities and repressed affections. With a more academic direction than in the series La mesías

, the Javis approach the codes of European prestige cinema in a film aware, sometimes too much, of its own importance.

The black ball was born from a play by the playwright Alberto Conejero, La piedra oscura, which stars a young soldier from the fascist side and the republican lieutenant Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, an ex-lover of Federico García Lorca, who was executed by Franco's army a year after the poet's death. The soldier's story of repressed desire and self-discovery is the center of the Javis' film, which alternates between this story and that of the soldier's grandson, and also that of a young man from Granada whose application to join a casino is denied due to his homosexuality; that is to say, Lorca's unpublished work La bola negra, of which only the first four pages are preserved but which the Javis dare to continue. Lorca, in reality, only appears in one scene, where he and Rodríguez Rapún talk with concern about the future and, precisely, about La bola negra, a work that Lorca says he has written to help young homosexuals. "So they don't end up like you and me," concludes the poet.

Two homosexual directors who will not be silenced

The Javis' film shares this vindicative nature. “We wanted to talk about different ways of facing being homosexual, from the impossibility of verbalizing it in 1932 to a present where we are already free –explains Ambrossi–. It’s a very big leap, but there’s a huge gap in between and a collective construction of the gay collective narrative is missing. We’ve gone from being prohibited and threatened with death to absolute freedom without anyone apologizing or explaining what happened before, who was to blame, and who supported us for things to change.” For the directors, premiering La bola negra in Cannes sends a clear political message. “To all those who want us to take a step back, I say they won’t silence us: tonight we are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival competition a film by two homosexual directors with three homosexual protagonists, and it’s a big film, the biggest you can make in Spain and it appeals to the general public,” they say.

With the film, Álvaro Lafuente Calvo debuts as an actor, Guitarricadelafuente for music, who makes a simply correct debut as the Francoist soldier, accompanied by Miguel Bernardeau who plays Rodríguez Rapún with that usual gravity of historical dramas, which contrasts with the naturalism of Carlos González, an actor who had already collaborated with the Javis in Maricón perdido and Veneno and here brings freshness with his interpretation of Rodríguez Rapún’s gay grandson; free, yes, but also lost and with a tempestuous relationship with the mother played by a Lola Dueñas who is past her prime. “Carlos and Lola’s characters are Spain, always blaming each other for everything and not agreeing on the past –says Ambrossi–. Their lack of communication has to do with inherited pain and hatred, the black ball they all carry inside, because what is unresolved perpetuates itself, and only when they tell each other the truth do they understand that in that family no one was to blame for anything and everyone did what they could.”

From Penélope Cruz the cabaret singer to Glenn Close the Hispanist

Although in secondary roles, the work of two well-known actresses like Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close also stands out in La bola negra. The Madrid-born actress offered herself to the Javis as soon as she knew about the project, and her desire to play a provocative and sexy cabaret singer inspired them to expand a small cuplet scene that was in the script. “It was supposed to be a wink, but since she was keen on it, we made it bigger so that it would have two musical numbers and be a big scene –explains Ambrossi–. Having Penélope is a total tribute to Spanish cinema and a way to get the film to a much wider audience.”

Glenn Close's presence is even briefer, but it has the charm of seeing her speak in Spanish and play a Hispanist specialist in Lorca and clearly inspired by Ian Gibson. “Glenn was a big fan of La mesías and at the time she wrote us an email to tell us how much she liked it and that she wanted to work with us –says Calvo–. And since we were working on the script and this character appeared, we proposed that she play it, and she accepted on the condition that she do it in Spanish, to make it a challenge. So we sent her a Spanish coach to Germany to work with her while she was filming the new installment of The Hunger Games.”