The Black Ball, by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, won tonight the award for best direction at the 79th edition of Cannes, ex aequo with the Polish Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland. It is the same award that their admired Pedro Almodóvar won with Volver in 1999, whom they precisely remembered when receiving the trophy, whom they referred to as “master” and who also competed this year with Bitter Christmas, as well as Rodrigo Sorogoyen, the third Spanish filmmaker selected in this edition.
The Black Ball, an original Movistar + film that will premiere in Spain on October 2, is a drama that weaves the shadow of Federico García Lorca with homosexuality in the last hundred years in Spain. The film barely made it to the market previews last weekend “because the sound post-production has been very long, but everyone has worked to fulfill the dream of being here,” the directors said in Cannes on Thursday, about a drama in which three stories from three eras, 1932, 1937, and 2017, intersect to come together and make sense in the end.
“Our film talks about humanity, about seeing the other as a human being, understanding them, comprehending them, loving them. And I believe that art makes us better, it makes us change inside,” Calvo said during his acceptance speech. Ambrossi, for his part, highlighted the political charge of the film: “When we were directing this film, I kept asking myself if I was honoring those who preceded me, and I realized that the only way to honor the suffering, the silence, the death of the LGTBI people who came before us is by ensuring that the next generations have more freedom.”
Ambrossi recalled in a conversation with EL PAÍS and other Spanish media: “Lorca is not a chimera, not an idea, he was a person. And Federico García Lorca was murdered for being gay. It is very important to claim that history is not a line of text, history, as the Hispanist portrayed by Glenn Close says, is people.” Alongside Close, the other star appearing in the feature film is Penélope Cruz, who plays the cupletista Nené Romero.
Calvo emphasized that line: “It is impossible to separate an author like Federico García Lorca from his intimate desires. It has been said a lot that, well, Federico’s sexuality doesn’t matter… But how could it not matter if all the plays talk about his heartbreak, his fear, his inability to have children, because Yerma is him. All the love and heartbreak that Lorca felt during his life was what built his work. The Black Ball is a story of loves because Lorca’s loves were silenced. I think that queer Federico has not been present at all in art in our country.”
Both, in Cannes, have insisted on their fight against the current rise of the far right and the cutting back of rights for minorities: “We live in a present in which, to honor the people who have fought and died, we at least have to be happy, try to enjoy our freedom and claim that not a single step back can be taken. And yes, the present is scary.”
Calvo stressed that “the threat exists, and it is on the street, and there are people trying to make fascism fashionable.” How to fight against that? “We try with our work, making stories in which everyone can get involved from the heart.”
Regarding the critics’ reactions, Guy Lodge, in Variety, was probably the most lukewarm Anglo-Saxon critic: “While The Black Ball occasionally reaches a poetic tone worthy of its historical muse, more often it presents itself as a pompous and exaggerated melodrama.” On the other hand, in The Hollywood Reporter, Richard Lawson highlights: “A vivid and moving epic about gay men in war-torn Spain is one of the standout films of the Cannes festival.”
For Kyle Buchanan, the festival and awards season reporter for The New York Times, The Black Ball should enter the Oscar race in several categories: “It is a sure Oscar contender in all categories, so I hope it soon receives a major nomination.” In The Screen International, Lee Marshall writes: “It is impossible not to admire the passion that directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi put into this story with three timelines […]. But The Black Ball is also an extensive and disorganized melodrama that aspires to the complexity of multiple plots of classic Pedro Almodóvar.”
Peter Bradshaw, from the British newspaper The Guardian, gives it four stars out of five: “A magnificently produced film, with careful details and solid construction, that manages to fit all the pieces of the puzzle.” Marcos Uzal, director of Cahiers du Cinéma, gives them two stars out of four in the legendary magazine’s critics’ chart.
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