Los Javez's 'Labula Negra' director shows how the Spanish sensibility became 'The Journey of Our Lives'

Penelope Cruz was one of the inspirations for Los Javis — the pen name of Spanish filmmakers Javier Ambrosi and Javier Calvo — years before they met for lunch to cast her as a singer (truly a force of nature) in La Bola Negra, an electrifying sensation at Cannes that is now Spain's gateway.

Penelope Cruz inspired Los Javis — the pen name of Spanish filmmakers Javier Ambrosi and Javier Calvo — years before they met for lunch to cast her as a singer (truly a force of nature) in La Bola Negra, a sensation at Cannes that is now up for Spain's Best International Film Oscar.

"I saw her in a clip from Jamón Jamón," says Ambrosi, referring to the 1992 Bigas Luna picture, in which Cruz first appeared opposite her husband, Javier Bardem. "I was young, and I thought, 'Who is he?'

Calvo was similarly mesmerized when he saw Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar's 1999 Oscar-winning film All About My Mother. "He has the makings of stars," he says. When you put a camera in front of him, he can do anything, and he doesn't even know what he's doing. "There's a power, a force driving him, and it's amazing to see that first hand." Watch on Deadline

Los Javis wanted Cruz for a small but pivotal role in his epic La Bola Negra, the intertwined story of three gay men living in three different time periods in Spain. In 1932, Carlos (Milo Koifs) is a young man in Granada at a time when Spain is unsettlingly on the rise toward vindictive intolerance of homosexuality. In 1937, against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, Sebastian (Guitarricadelafuente) and Rafael (Miguel Bernardo) are soldiers drawn across hostile political divides drawn closer by the conflict. And in 2017, Alberto (Carlos González) is a playwright from Madrid who becomes involved with prominent researcher Federico García Lorca (played by another Hollywood star, Glenn Close, who speaks fluent Spanish) in a storyline that connects characters from previous timelines.

Cruise's character, one of Romero's grandmothers, performs for the soldiers in a series of beautiful and dangerous dances that the boys, far from home, starve in their eyes. Los Javis says Nene was inspired by La Fornarina, a copletista, a Spanish singer of copelli songs — sordid numbers about “sex and drugs,” as Calvo explains — who performed in Madrid theaters at the turn of the last century.

Their research included reading erotic novels written by Spanish author and fashion designer Alvaro Retana, who also wrote the lyrics for the raunchy songs of the kind Cruz performs in La Bola Negra. "They were singing all over Madrid. They were so cute, they set them free - and they thought they were going to be free forever," says Calvo. But these singers and their gay friends, all the people in that circle, were all imprisoned, prosecuted, killed or disappeared. Somehow they are forgotten. So we wanted to bring them back."

Cruz was already a fan of Los Javis and was impressed by their 2023 ultra-grossing drama TV mini-series La Mesías, a hit for Moviestar+ in Spain, now available via Mubi in the UK, Canada, Turkey, the Netherlands, Germany and Australia, and coming soon to France. "They're so talented," I remember Cruise telling me at the afterparty in Cannes. "I also saw their first TV show 'Venno,' and now they've won the Cannes Film Festival directorial prize," he said.

Ambrosi says the next time they work with Cruise, they plan to make "a whole movie around him," but that will be after their next feature project, which they claim will be "90 percent in English." That movie, whenever it's made, will probably have a larger budget than Los Javis spent on La Bola Negra. Ambrosi says the budget of about $15 million was low, but "it's big for a Spanish film."

With time and the right people at La Bola Negra, Ambrosi adds, "We knew we could do it big. The scope isn't always about the big scenery; it's about how the people are placed, so you feel it's bigger, and you take the time to find the right places, because these are all natural locations." They also insisted on allowing proper rehearsal time before the 12-week shoot ("because it's a deep story and the actors needed time").

Calvo explains that they had to find "creative solutions" because the bag's wires were tight. For example, they didn't have a room in which to shoot all the soldiers who were eating dinner. We're like, "Okay, then we're going to do a nice picture with everyone outside at the table, and just imagine them. I went out to dinner," he explains.

They also turned to the "godfathers of cinema," as Calvo refers to legendary directors like Theodoros Angelopoulos (Alexander the Great) and Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris), who managed to capture scenes of film magic "with just the landscape, the fog, and the combination of humans in the right way."

Working with renowned cinematographer Grace Jordana - a frequent collaborator, as well as editor, production designer, hair and makeup designer, costume designer, composer and many other key creatives - Les Javis sought to bring the magic of the "Godfathers of Cinema" to his film. "They are part of our team," says Ambrosi. "We've grown together. We learn together in every project. So that's why the film is so big, even if it's not budgeted. They put in a lot of effort because it's a collective experience. It's like they put it in their souls."

"It's a film about poetry, and there's also poetry in the images," says Callow. You don't have to show everything. "You can give something and leave it to the viewer's imagination."

"If you don't have money, don't screw it up," Ambrosi jumps in. “Cut it out, and someone can talk about it in the next scene. Sometimes we need a place of natural beauty. For example, we didn't have an office for the lieutenant general in the movie, so we found an empty space with a nice view—you can see the sea—and we filled it with Vic Miz's people and a small framed photo of Franco, and that was it. And it's not expensive."

The bottom line, Calvo believes - as the likes of David Lean found when directing Lawrence of Arabia - is that there was a need to find intimacy in such an epic story.

Calvo adds that Los Javis was aided in this endeavor, as the film is loosely based on Alberto Conijero's one-act play La Piedra Oscura, which deals only with Rafael and Sebastian's relationship, a play "so intimate and delicate" that they wanted to expand it into a trilogy. "Like a big movie, and an intimate movie at the same time," Calvo says, opening his arms. You have fragility and war, so it's about conflict. And it was great to create that, because sometimes it's harder to create a Rafael and Sebastian relationship, with all the tension, than a bomb scene."

"There were countless meetings with key creatives in pre-production to map out the film, and the more mistakes they made, the better, because it meant they got it right during the shoot," says Ambrosi. "It's like work, work, work, make a mistake, then try again," he says with a smile. However, work was not the same. "I always look back and say, 'Oh, wow, that was the trip of a lifetime,'" says Calvo.

Ambrosi claims that the film is proudly gay, whether it puts it in a niche box or not. It's a "gay movie," he says, and "I like to keep it that way." "I want people to have a universal experience, but I don't want them to lose sight of the fact that it's gay."

It's certainly unusual to see a gay story set against the backdrop of war. Calvo cites Tarkovsky's classic Ivan's Baby, Elm Klimov's harrowing Come and See, and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now as his favorite war films. "So, I have those references, but my feelings are something else and my sensibility is what we portray," he says. Why shouldn't I make a movie the same way people make war movies, but tell my story and use my emotions? It was natural for me to talk about myself only through my references. And why can't we have it all?"

Ambrosi laughs. “It's great that we told everyone it's a gay film with - mostly - gay actors portraying gay characters, directed by a gay man about the queer experience, and number one at the box office every night in Spain. I love it. I think it's interesting, because it really represents two things. "First, the world is going in a direction that we're not always aware of, and also the industry needs to understand that gay stories aren't important."

Ambrosi continues that La Bola Negra is a starting point for the next conversation, and that “when we try, when we prove them wrong, we can talk about universal stories. But we had to tell them, "You don't need to change the lead role and put a straight star in it to attract the audience." They just say, "Oh, it's a gay story."

Were they pressured to compromise in any way? They don't even try to do that with us because we write, direct and produce. This is our film." Ambrose answers with gusto. However, he admits that they will encounter problems in the making of the 2020 miniseries Veneno. "It was a show with trans actresses, and everyone said, 'You won't find this many trans actresses in a show in Spain.' And we were like, "We're going to do it."

During its travels to promote the film — in Cannes (where Los Javis shared the Best Director award with Fatherland's Pawel Pawlikowski), Telluride, Toronto (where it won the People's Choice Award for Best Picture), San Sebastian (where the film was honored with the festival's Audience Award) and here in London — it received a positive response. "The reaction of non-gay people, non-LGBT people, is the same. The idea of wanting to be yourself, being rejected, is what many women think. It takes all. In some cases, it is about family, about motherhood, about brotherhood, about friendship. It's a war movie, it's about being different, but it's about art and the power of art."

Listening intently, Calvo jumps in to point out that the film is “about understanding and seeing the other as a human being. Which I think is important."

When it came to casting the male lead, they chose singer-musician Guitarricadelafuente because they were drawn to the "magnetism, the sadness" in his eyes. "He had to be the beholder, Calvo says, and he has eyes that you can rely on, and he had this shyness, but this courage, this strength, but then this tenderness. We just knew it was for him."

Meanwhile, Ambrosi hails Bernardo (Elite) as "one of the best of his generation". "We needed his technique because Guitarricadelafuente is new, so we needed a balance to play with each other," he explains. So is Gonzalez. "She's very glamorous and fun in real life," says Ambrosi. "Here, he's doing something you can't imagine. If you were to meet him, you would say, "Are you the same person?"

In fact, I spoke to González at an after-party for a special screening of La Bola Negra at the Tate Modern, and he was downright weird. He promised to do anything for the movie "with his big black balls". My eyes widened at the comment and our dirty laughs nearly sent us out of the party.

As for Carlos, they were looking for the Andalusian boys, and the moment they saw the Koifs test, they called off the search.

The roles played by Guitarricadelafuente and Bernardeau are the heart of the film and provide its most tender and intimate moments. They first met at rehearsal, where Guitarricadelfuente, who had never played before, says she felt "100 percent safe" because she was working in front of a professional. "It was a very special moment when I met Miguel," he says.

Having someone like Miguel "really helped me on this journey," says Guitarricadelafuente. "There was something very special about the way our characters grew up together, and developing that intimacy, that nonverbal way of communicating, those gestures that communicated so much. I'm grateful for the time we spent in that room rehearsing."

Les Javis was "democratic" with us, he notes, because "they let us express ourselves freely, and if sometimes there was something in the conversation that maybe didn't resonate as well with us, they'd say, 'What do you say?' What are you doing?” They would let us go ahead and magical things would happen.

Could they improvise? Bernardo shakes his head and points out that it wasn't so much improvisation because of how much thought we put into each scene because of how the three stories intertwine. "You have to be careful what you change. There are a lot of details, so you can't improvise. But they were very free to change the smaller things with us. I felt comfortable trying different ways and paths to enter the scene."

I remember being in Cannes at the Grand Theater Lumière, covering the 20 minute opening for the film and watching the faces of this new generation of filmmakers and actors. Bernardo was holding back tears. "I knew when I started crying, I wasn't going to stop," she admits.

In front of him, he recalls, the festival's camera crew "and Tilda Swinton were clapping and looking at us." Swinton introduced Bernardo to his agent, Christian Huddle, the company's CEO, Milton Huddle, who now represents him. Now this actor will soon move from Spain to live in London.

"It made me feel like we were at a concert," recalls Guitarricadelafuente, looking up at the second floor of the Lumière to see so many young people clearly connecting with the film. He notes that he was surprised at how audiences in Spain flocked to see the picture. He says that Los Javis was known to young people. "For example, there are people in my family who haven't been to the movies in 10 years. They feel like they're missing out because there's a consensus among everyone to see it. It's not a movie about the Civil War, it's not a movie about Lorca. It's a movie about life."

Culturally, Spain is on a roll. Singer-songwriter Rosalia won the Best International Artist of the Year award at the Brit Awards. La Bola Negra won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. And of course, Spain won the World Cup. Calvo gives a big smile. "We're just coming out."

Netflix is releasing the film in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Friday ahead of a wider release in the coming weeks, before a theatrical release in the US and Canada on December 2. Altitude releases the film in the UK on November 6.

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