'La bola negra' Review
Release Date: 10/16/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Drama. History. Romance. War.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Netflix.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Netflix's movie catalog is certainly diverse. On one end of the spectrum, you have the easy background watches the company prides itself on producing, feeding the algorithm with romantic comedies and trashy true-crime docs that people devour like fast food (I mean this mostly as a compliment). Then there’s the other end: auteurist films funded as part of the company’s effort to be taken seriously as a distributor, even as they have rejected the theatrical release model for much of their history. Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a perfect example of that side of Netflix, and it has been the company’s best chance at the Best Picture Oscar, one it has chased for years. Ultimately, it fell short to Green Book. Many pundits think La bola negra, the ambitious Spanish drama they bought after a rapturous reception at Cannes, is their next best chance. That’s quite a reputation to live up to. Still, La bola negra is an achievement that carries that kind of weight, with a bold story structure, jaw-dropping technical design, and a powerful way of expressing the LGBTQ+ characters at its heart.
La bola negra is a creatively structured, time-spanning intersection of three stories and three eras of Spanish culture, viewed through the prism of gay men confronting their sexuality in ways that are personally challenging and deeply affecting. The middle section of the timeline anchors the film, following small-town trumpet player Sebastian in the heart of the Spanish Civil War. It is 1937, as Italian bombs send the villagers of Sebastian’s home scurrying to survive. The Nationalist forces eventually draft Sebastian into service after finding him far from home, and his tender soul must trade his instrument for a rifle. Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente plays Sebastian and, in his film debut, delivers a heartbreaking performance as striking as his professional name.
Directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, professional collaborators and long-time romantic partners, don’t flinch from the carnage of this period. There are bloody bodies everywhere you look, victims of a masculine and toxic energy that drives the conduct of most of Sebastian’s fellow soldiers. All you need to do is watch how they act when a cabaret singer (a scene-stealing Penélope Cruz) comes to entertain them on the front lines, frothing like rabid animals. Sebastian differs from these men in almost every way, though he seems to believe in the movement. These beliefs are challenged when he is tasked with guarding an injured rebel (Miguel Bernardeau), whose secrets make him valuable to his captors, Sebastian, and the rest of La bola negra.
The other two sections of the film are positioned as narrative reactions to what we learn in this 1937 section. In 1932, right at the boiling point of rebellion, wealthy young man Carlos (Milo Quifes) has been “blackballed” from joining a local casino because of the rumors about his closeted homosexuality (La bola negra translates to “the Black Ball,” by the way). It’s a source of shame for his domineering father, but his mother, sister, and friends are a bit more compassionate. Still, this pressure weighs down on him like a medicine ball. One brilliant sequence of expressive dancing at a dive bar, captured by Los Javis in a mostly unbroken take, shows him trying to shake that strife through song.
I’ve seen a ton of people compare the past-future structure to a number of films, even if the comparisons are imperfect because of this movie’s singular voice. While watching La bola negra, I kept thinking of RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys. That is a phenomenal 2024 drama that interrogates the struggles of the 1950’s American black teenager by telling a very human and sad story of abuse and persecution, then jumping to present times to question the lingering effects that this persecution had on the culture. It was also a formally inventive film, shot entirely in first-person POV. La bola negra doesn’t have a specific visual gimmick like that. Still, its story does something similar: it tries to draw a meaningful link between a shameful history and today’s new challenges.
The third and final section of La bola negra focuses on that connection, jumping decades ahead to 2017. Alberto (Carlos González) is a historian who used to write plays about the queer experience. Despite the support of his loving partner (Julio Torres), Alberto is a shy and lonely man who wanders his way through life, only coming to life when he has to spar with his drug-addicted and verbally abusive mother (Lola Dueñas). The death of her father, a man who Alberto never knew, leads to some surprising revelations via ancient documents, jolting a burst of creativity that he did not expect. Glenn Close even drops by for a small, nice but somewhat distracting cameo as an American historian who helps him discover what these pieces of the puzzle mean.
La bola negra requires a little patience to fully complete the circular nature of its story, but it's never even remotely boring in those moments of build. The film is gorgeous, largely thanks to its 35mm cinematography. The film stock makes the movie feel like the kind of discovery that Alberto would unearth, particularly in the 1930s sequences. The editing, production design, and musical score are all so precisely considered, really maximizing the impact of the story and these characters’ journeys. It makes the different eras feel connected and whole, which is sometimes a problem with these multi-story epics.
Netflix's confidence in La bola negra is clear in their decision to roll it out to a limited number of theaters for weeks before it hits the streaming service. That signals not only that they want people to experience it on a big screen, but that they want an audience to be moved together by the power of the storytelling. Even if you are not LGBTQ+ or Spanish, you will feel the passion of the filmmaking in your core. This is a movie I have thought about for days since I saw it, spinning in my head like a black ball on a roulette table.
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