During the frightened, lonely days of the pandemic, the Spanish television series Veneno — a biography of a famous trans singer — arrived in the States and warmed up the days of those who encountered it. The series was created by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, a creative duo (and former couple) known in their native country as Los Javis. Their style is lively and sentimental, but unafraid of edge and darkness. They are, in some ways, children of Pedro Almodóvar, similarly enamored of memory and melodrama but also individual, offering something refreshingly youthful and decidedly theirs. That developing craft is on bountiful display in their new film The Black Ball (La Bola Negra), a triptych gay epic that spans decades and tangles with a particularly grim time in modern Spanish history.
The Black Ball opens in 1937, where a rural village loyal to Nationalist rebels is holding a celebration to welcome their Italian allies. Only, when the planes fly overhead, they strafe the villagers with bullets and send bombs whining down into buildings. Many are killed, but one young man, Sebastián (the singer Guitarricadelafuente, making a promising acting debut), scrambles to safety, only to be conscripted into the fascist army.
