For Guitarricadelafuente and Miguel Bernardeau, the romance that fuels “La Bola Negra” wasn’t the challenge.
“It wasn’t hard to fall in love with him,” Bernardeau says, looking at his co-star. The two men, both 29-year-old Spaniards, have not yet grown tired of each other, despite a world tour that began in Cannes this spring and which now brings them to New York. “It was difficult to create war.”
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These two forces, love and war, coexist painfully in what may be the most ambitious film of this year’s Oscar season. Directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, the two-man team known as Los Javis, “La Bola Negra” depicts the lives of several gay men in Spain across three separate timelines: In 1932, young Carlos (Milo Quifes) is excluded – hence the film’s title – from a social club because of his sexuality. Set in 1937, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Guitarricadelafuente and Bernardeau play the soldier and the prisoner of war he must guard, respectively, as their affections inexplicably blossom across political divides. And in 2017, historian Alberto (Carlos González) struggles to understand how the two previous narratives intersect, perplexed until an academic (Glenn Close in a brief, gripping appearance) steps in to help him.
The story of Spain’s breakup and fall into a repressive dictatorship was nothing new to the actors. “It’s something that touched everyone: our great-grandparents were all involved,” explains Guitarricadelafuente. “It’s common in our DNA in Spanish society.” But for the story to seem real and immediate, they had to learn to behave like soldiers. “We received military preparation – how to hold a rifle,” says Guitarricadelafuente, who has a gentle, gentle demeanor both in person and on screen. His Sébastien would prefer to play the trumpet: he only fights reluctantly; he is more comfortable in his feelings than in combat. “He has a certain naivety,” he continues, “but he is not stupid. Playing the trumpet is what gives him hope for the future: one day he will be able to go to Madrid and become a musician.” Indeed, an encounter with a vivacious lounge singer, played by Penélope Cruz, convinces Sebastián that the world is bigger than he ever imagined, in a dazzling scene at the heart of the film.
At least one actor in “La Bola Negra” wanted to make sure Guitarricadelafuente could be credible as a fighter and as a lover: Meeting him for the first time, Pedro Almodóvar, one of the film’s producers, asked if the singer had any upside.
Guitarricadelafuente first tells Almodóvar’s question in Spanish before translating it: “Will he avoid being just, like… Good?”
He’ll need some armor to prepare for awards season. After blowing up a sleeping Cannes earlier this year, receiving a 20-minute standing ovation, winning the shared award for best director and selling to Netflix, “La Bola Negra” is an object of fascination in the cinema world. And since becoming the first non-English-language film since 2011 to win the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s seen as the only Oscar contender that could unseat “The Odyssey” in March. (“The Odyssey” is a technically dazzling, deeply moving examination of the power of love in the face of the madness of war, while “La Bola Negra” is… also all of those things, made on a much smaller budget. And for those who consider Los Javis too out of nowhere to surpass Nolan — well, who knew of the Daniels before beating Steven Spielberg?)
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Suffice to say that these two actors, still little known in the United States, are on the verge of being everywhere. And this kindness identified by Almodóvar could take Guitarricadelafuente very far. The singer has a gentle, serious character, with a fleeting tendency to remember the emotional truth of his work with Los Javis, while Bernardeau is more frank, analytical and direct, and never once breaks into speaking Spanish, even if his co-star lets out soft “Sí”s as punctuation. Together, however, they are comfortable enough to pick up sentences where the other leaves off and to laugh – sometimes sadly, sometimes giddyly – while remembering the making of the film that made Guitarricadelafuente an actor and changed their lives.
If the film wins an Oscar, it will be a milestone for world cinema, for Netflix and for queer artists: Although Bernardeau does not identify as queer, Guitarricadelafuente is one of several gay actors playing gay characters in the Oscar race, including Andrew Scott of “Elsinore” and Jordan Firstman of “Club Kid.” That perhaps makes this year an even gayer Oscar race than the one where “Moonlight” beat out a confusing Faye Dunaway musical.
But more than 20 years after 2005’s “Brokeback Mountain” won nearly every precursor but lost on Oscar night, are audiences ready for a film this raunchy and provocative? What’s on screen is powerful, so much so that the actors say they had to be careful that the romance didn’t become so overwhelming that it strained credulity. “We had to fight against this and try to manage the volume of this love,” says Bernardeau, “because it is an impossible love. »
Through their efforts, something universal emerges – assuming a post-“Brokeback” and post-Moonlight audience is open to it. “Older generations who would have been outraged by this 20 years ago are going to understand it now,” says Guitarricadelafuente. “And that transcends: it’s a love story that everyone can relate to.”
“La Bola Negra” connects with the public’s feelings through a deep specificity. He refuses to hold our hand, trusting us to follow the rhythm of the work and life of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, increasingly integrated into the text, or when a notification sound from the gay sex app Grindr is the cue that transports us to modern times for the first time. “I don’t like movies that treat me like I’m stupid,” Calvo, 35, says via Zoom in a joint interview with Ambrossi. “The public is quite intelligent. When I see ‘Chernobyl’, I may not understand nuclear power, but I’m there. In the gay world, no difference.”
In an unprecedented show of confidence, Netflix is granting the film a 47-day theatrical release, beginning October 16.
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“We made this film for the cinema,” explains Ambrossi, 42. “We shot it on 35mm. So that was good news, that people could experience the film the way we thought they would. But on Netflix you can watch it again, you can watch all the Penélope Cruz numbers over and over again.”
“And again and again and again!” Calvo intervenes.
The Netflix acquisition deal was announced on the last day of the festival. For a streamer that has won Oscars – but, unfortunately for its ambitious leadership, never won Best Picture – for films by stalwarts of world cinema like Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, newcomers Los Javis might, surprisingly, represent its best chance yet to take home the top Oscar prize. Two years ago, the company bet on another Cannes prize winner on homosexuality told in Spanish, and the fate that “Emilia Pérez” suffered after the publication of old inflammatory tweets from lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón may help explain why the “La Bola Negra” team addresses a single person, in a thoughtful and deliberate way. The directors are eager to become world-famous authors: Los Javis has already created the biographical TV series “Veneno,” about Spanish trans singer Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, which aired in the United States on HBO Max in 2020. In their home country, they are famous as judges on “Drag Race España” and have become the subject of speculation about their romantic relationship – they separated during the filming of “La Bola Negra,” but remain partners creative.
Calvo mentions that while “Brokeback Mountain” and “Moonlight” have both promoted acceptance of queer love, he hopes that “La Bola Negra,” which is more direct in its depiction of gay sensuality and the male body, can go even further. “There is no better way to make people understand things than art and cinema,” he says. “It’s a really good way to create empathy, because when you cry with someone, you’re still connected to that story, to that person, to that community.”
However, he sees the changes brought about by the films as progressive rather than revolutionary. “Thanks to the work of activists, artists, little by little, it is a better place. But hatred is a shadow that still haunts us.” The success of “La Bola Negra” may indicate something hopeful in our dark historical moment — that a love story, especially one that seems impossible, can stop us in our tracks and make us feel.
But to get there, the directors had to find their perfect leading men. What Almodóvar may have found simply pleasant, Calvo calls “that sad little gay soldier look” – a fragile, easily hurt quality that manifested itself in Guitarricadelafuente’s music. As a singer, he has collaborated with Australian pop star Troye Sivan and, sylph-like and dreamy, he cuts the same figure, just in Spanish; although it did not cross the United States, Guitarricadelafuente sold out in Spain.
The singer’s casting was also political: As a young actor, Calvo played a gay character in the teen drama “Física o Química.”
Gn entert
