Evaluating Cannes' Competition: 4/22 -- 'La Bola Negra', Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo ("Los Javis")

 

Welcome to the fourth of 22 installments to a series I've dubbed 'Evaluating Cannes' Competition', where I will be going through and reviewing each of the 22 films that played in competition for the right to win the Palme d'Or at this year's, 2026, Cannes Film Festival. Today's film is the one which emerged as the dark horse hit out of competition, 'La Bola Negra' ('The Black Ball'). 

'La Bola Negra' stole Cannes headlines this summer with its sizable standing ovation that vaulted it into at least the top-six longest in Cannes' recorded history (Deadline reported a 20-minute ovation, which would put it second all-time, while Variety reported the ovation at 16 minutes, good for sixth ever). The filmmakers known collectively as 'Los Javis', Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, have been more known, and built a more prominent cache of work, in the realm of the television, but featuring names with Hollywood cache like Penelope Cruz and Glenn Close on board, and given the audience's praise for the film out of the French festival, the expectation would be that this expands their awareness to a global audience. The follow-up to their 2017 feature film 'Holy Camp!' remains heavily interested in Spanish culture, focusing this time around on a sweeping, time-spanning, queer epic. 

Los Javis dance between 1932, 1937, and 2017 through the characters of Carlos (Milo Quifes), a young man "black balled" from membership at a casino for being gay, Sebastian (Guitarricadelafuente), a Spanish musician taken by Francoista forces after an Italian air raid of his village, and Alberto (Carlos Gonzalez), a researcher who has sworn off writing and looks for subversive queer subtext to music of Constantinpole in the 1930s. Through the usage of their camera, the viewer is floating through history at times; through walls, down hallways, and in front of its characters. The aspect ratio makes it clear from the jump, too, that what we're seeing is a picture of history.

A central theme to 'La Bola Negra' is the idea of history through its people. This theme is made more overt with the Glenn Close character, and drilled home with the black-and-white flashback appearance of Federico Garcia Lorca at the conclusion of the film, but Los Javis at one point explicitly note the stories buried in the soil with those who they represented. This is why I think the usage of the Alberto character is my favorite for its poignancy -- a rather average gay man, whose defining trait is a moody temperament betraying a hidden depression. We learn of Alberto's decision to stop writing plays, and we're also told indirectly that he lacks passion in his work that he once had; this is a history being unfulfilled in waking life. The perceived "averageness" of Alberto, his lack of beauty compared to the handsome other protagonists in the other two segments of the film, or his more comfortable life, do not define him any less than Sebastian or Carlos. This is Los Javis 'preserving' those stories of modern life now, to represent a current generation of queer folks. 

The cinematography of Gris Jordana, their cinematographer for their two standout series, also displays ideas surrounding the themes of the film. The style of shooting is deeply observation. At times, the camera does literally seem to float, as when the Italian air raid occurs and we move almost in a dance with Sebastian through a killing lane, or the camera may feel suspended, as when we watch Sebastian playing his trumpet in a moment of helplessness. It is notable that the characters never look at the camera. The best example of this is the second-to-last shot of the film, an intense tight close-up on Sebastian, also angled down to look slightly down at him. Even here, in this ultra-tight, where you would think the character has no choice but to look down the lens, he does not. This specifically shows how the viewer is peering into history, as opposed to it gazing back at us. Los Javis mix in a great number of shots that involve the characters looking directly at each other in the eyes (Rafael and Sebastian, in a full body wide shot, on opposite sides of the frame is my favorite example of this, but there are also tight shots where the focus of the characters is solely on the person opposite them. 

Ideas of pleasure and pain -- like that sweeping one-shot through the carnage of the bombing -- are a secondary theme that supports the main theme of those queer stories of long ago being buried. In one scene, shot from straight down, watching a truck of wounded and dead arriving to camp, the ground is the color of, and appears to be rather close to the image of, a bruised body. Scenes of Alberto having a Grindr hookup and maimed bodies pulled off a truck are edited back-to-back. Rafael (Miguel Bernardeau) and Sebastian's meetings occur because of Rafael injuries, and their interactions frequently revolve around them. Frequently, queer stories revolve around trauma and it feels without love, but Los Javis capture the yearning of these moments in a way that more artfully conveys texture as to how they imprint upon a person, as we see through Sebastian's living lover.

In one particular scene of 'La Bola Negra', with Sebastian on the beach with the Nationalist forces, the Franco supporters are gallivanting around, nude, fireworks in the background. Eventually, they find a dead body in the water and raise it high above their heads; the body is a parallel to a story Sebastian hears of a boy, killed (for being gay, it's implied), by drowning in a trough, his body missing for 100 days. The story is told to Sebastian, who is startled by the boy's mother earlier than this point in the film, his mother thinking he looks like him. This thread ties into a critical piece of the film: that our three lead protagonists are all lacking in something within them. One is a young man who may not even know he's queer yet, as we can understand through his relationship and awakening within it with Rafael. One is a closeted man, living a lie to his father. The third is openly gay, but mired in a quagmire of depression, his relationship with his mother shattered partially due to the unspoken of truth about his grandfather. The beauty of the emotion of this film is that the imperfections and warts of love, and of finding yourself, are presented with a delicate hand and the utmost interest and care in its primary subjects above all.

Final Rating: 4/5

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No footage in the video embedded into this blog post is my own, nor is the embedded YouTube video itself my own, and I claim no ownership or credit over it. Media shown and discussed in this blog post is credited to Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (intellectual property), Netflix (distribution and trailer ownership rights), and the copyright holders and producers of 'La Bola Negra': MOVISTAR PLUS, SUMA CONTENT FILMS, TELEFONICO AUDIOVISUAL DIGITAL, LOS ESQUIADORES AIE, EL DESEO, LE PACTE, ATRESMEDIA, and CREA SGR. All Rights Reserved. This non-commercial blog plot is intended for critical and educational purposes and my usage of any material I do not own or have the license or rights to should be considered 'Fair Use' under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act.