Los Javis La Bola Negra Oscar buzz, Digi Mart USA News: In their native Spain, filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi are so famous that they are known by the shorthand Los Javis. Until last year they were romantic partners for more than a decade, serve as judges on the Spanish edition of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and are known for faces so sharply angular they look as if they stepped off the set of Zoolander.
Now they are the darlings of Hollywood. Their time-hopping, nearly three-hour gay epic La Bola Negra arrives in cinemas this week, and a Best Director nomination at next year’s Oscars is widely expected.
The film is, in the words of the source, a very big deal.
“It’s funny that we as a LGBTQ+ community are told, ‘oh, there are gay people in every show and every movie’,” the 42-year-old Ambrossi says. “But at the same time, they want us to be niche.
But we need more mainstream pieces of art that talk about our history and puts us in the centre of the story, with gay actors portraying gay characters, and trans people, lesbians, bisexuals. So we’re done with it.
We’re done with being niche.”
La Bola Negra is inspired by an unfinished play by the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. It is set across three time periods: before, during and long after the Spanish Civil War.
In 1932, a wealthy young man (Milo Quifes) is refused entry to an exclusive members’ club over rumors of his homosexuality. In 1937, a trumpeter (musician and first-time actor Guitarricadelafuente) falls for a captured freedom fighter (Miguel Bernardeau).
In 2017, a struggling writer (Carlos González) discovers his family links to both stories. The three storylines intertwine as the film bends genres.
The film is a romance, occasionally a mystery and often a war movie. Despite a budget of €15 million, the source describes it as glossy, maximalist entertainment that looks expensive.
It is also relentlessly sexy, lingering on male bodies and scenes of soldiers parading naked on Spanish beaches. Ambrossi says the film is also “very naked in the soul,” pointing to a scene in which one character gently tends another’s bloody war wounds with a moistened towel.
“Women take care of men like that, like in The English Patient. But we don’t have our English Patient.”
The film won a shared Best Director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The pair recalled that promotion of their earlier work, a musical called La Llamada staged thirteen years ago, was far more modest, with the two selling merchandise and posters themselves.
This time Netflix is distributing the film in the US, while Altitude distributes it in the UK, and the studio is helping finance a global promotional campaign.
The directors’ romantic relationship of 13 years ended during filming. Their breakup, which they describe as having no drama, was publicly announced last November, and they insist they remain creative partners.
“What I’ve learnt from this experience is that we’re meant to be together beyond our relationship,” Ambrossi says. “And I discovered that this is our destiny: we’re meant to be doing this together as professionals.” Calvo describes their working styles as complementary: “I have my OCD and he has his intuition.
So we meet somewhere in the middle.”
Penélope Cruz has a dazzling extended cameo as a flamboyant cabaret singer entertaining the Spanish troops. Calvo recalls that she was “unstoppable” and repeatedly asked for more takes.
Cruz is widely predicted to receive an Oscar nomination for the film.
Both directors say they learned much of their queer Spanish history through their work. Their 2020 limited series Veneno told the story of Spanish trans icon Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez.
Ambrossi says the project was a wake-up call, and he later began working with Fundación 26 de Diciembre, a nonprofit supporting elderly LGBTQ+ people. Calvo says he found queerness through movies, records and artists such as David Bowie and Pedro Almodóvar, but that it was always hidden.
Both expressed concern about rising intolerance, with Ambrossi saying that rights are sometimes treated as open to debate. Calvo said that creating work that opposes intolerance, hate and fascism is part of their job.
The directors have cleared their schedules until March, which coincides with next year’s Academy Awards. They say they do not yet know what they will work on next.
La Bola Negra is in UK and Ireland cinemas now, via Altitude.
