Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi sign the cinematographic phenomenon of the year
As inspired as it is irregular, 'La bola negra' confirms the ability of the Javis to connect with mainstream audiences from concerns that until not long ago were marginal
'The Black Ball'
- Director: Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo. Screenplay: Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo based on the works of Alberto Conejero and Federico García Lorca.
- 155 minutes. Spain and France (2026).
- Starring Guitarricadelafuente, Miguel Bernardeu, Carlos González and Penélope Cruz.
Can a film be made around Lorca without Lorca? The second feature film by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi it seems that it is proposed, at the beginning, from this paradox arising from the need to convert the absence of the murdered poet into a significant off-screen space. The black ball interweaves three stories, the one that adapts the unfinished homonymous play by the Granada native, set in 1932; the one that is inspired by The dark stone, by Alberto Conejero, with whom Lorca's lover, Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, acts as the protagonist, which takes place in the year 1937; and the one, set in 2017, that reconstructs some elements of the past through a young historian who seeks to unearth family secrets. Los Javis thus film an ambitious historical fresco in which a genealogy is reclaimed queer with the Civil War as a conditioning framework for the gay experience. To make it clear how, despite the fascists' obsession with erasing Federico García Lorca even physically from the collective memory, his legacy remains alive across generations and countries.
The black ball captures the taste for expansive and intertwined narratives of a creative duo forged above all in television series. The splendid scene with Penélope Cruz or the prominence of Guitarricadelafuente demonstrate the good eye of the Javis for pop stars. And their uncomplexed commitment to melodrama tunes in with the emotional narratives that work so well in Hollywood. But the film also has problems. It is one thing to remember that desire does not understand politics and another to present fascist soldiers from a banally eroticized perspective. The recurring structure of investigation around an enigma and the obsession with tying up loose ends ends up erasing any vestige of mystery, to the point that even the Javis renounce the option of keeping Lorca off-screen. And the question remains in the air whether the Andalusian writer would have connected with the final embodiment of his poetic conception of the afterlife.