La Bola Negra

La Bola Negra grows out of a text Federico García Lorca never finished. He wrote about four pages on a young gay man turned away from a social club in Granada. The black ball of the title is the vote that says no.

Los Javis, the duo of Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, take that fragment as a starting point and split the story across three eras. In 1932, we follow Carlos. In 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, Sebastián. In 2017, Alberto. They are three gay men from different times, tied together by desire, family secrets and what one generation keeps from the next.

The film is not a Lorca biopic, though the poet and Rafael Rodríguez Rapún, his secretary and partner, show up along the way.

The cast mixes newcomers with big names. Singer Guitarricadelafuente shares the screen with Penélope Cruz, Glenn Close and Lola Dueñas.