Huevos de oro

Bigas Luna's 1993 film HUEVOS DE ORO ("Golden Balls/Eggs", a title punning on both the goose that laid the golden eggs and a tough guy's balls of steel) depicts the rise and fall of Benito Gonzalez (Javier Bardem), a young Spanish construction worker who becomes an affluent real estate developer on the Mediterranean coast.

After being jilted by his first girlfriend (Elisa Tovati), who leaves him for his best friend, Benito develops a mania for building the tallest building in Benidorm, which may be seen as little more than an enormous phallic symbol flaunting his manhood. Obsessed with this big construction project, his lust for his next woman, Claudia (Maribel Verdú) takes second place to having her sleep with potential investors to win them over. Benito then marries a banker's daughter, Marta (Maria de Medeiros) to have access to her father's funds. Benito lives a life of sexual excess and enormous consumption of food, especially the Alicante sweet known as torron. Like some of the work of Almodovar, Bigas Luna clearly likes riffing on Spanish stereotypes and regional differences.

Ultimately, however, Benito's hubris leads to his downfall. This protagonist is certainly an odious guy, but -- though I won't spoil the ending -- the depths to which he is ultimately sunk inspire a perverse sympathy in the viewer. Years went by between my first viewing of this film and the second, but in the interim I would often look back on this film's plot and ending scenes, thinking of how sad it was to lose everything and end up that way.

HUEVOS DE ORO isn't an especially deep film, but that dramatic arc, hewing very close to classical notions of tragedy, is impressive and I'd say this film is worth a watch.

This is a generally enjoyable send-up of the excesses of the 1980's:- the get-rich quick, looking after no. 1 culture which prevailed for a mercifully brief period. The anti-hero is a cynical building contractor who will do anything to achieve his aim of making a fortune out of nothing, regardless of the law or of any loyalty to those closest to him. Needless to say, he gets his come-uppance and the final scene in which he smashes a lavatory to pieces is vintage Bigas Luna.

Unfortunately, it doesn't quite manage to keep up the same pace as "Jamon Jamon" and, particularly after about half way through, it starts to lose its momentum and the viewer starts to lose interest. But there are one or two scenes which are so funny that they alone make the film worth seeing, e.g. the three-in-a-bed scene in which he suddenly realises that he is not the fantastic lover he had always imagined he was.

Bigas Luna's film is far from perfect, but I found it a sharp and caustic portrait of a particular lifestyle and a particular time and place in recent Spanish history - the 80's construction boom, the new rich and their unabashed cheesiness, the macho ibérico...Bardem's character is spot on, and he plays the role incredibly well. In fact, all of the performances are very good; it is the directing that occasionally fails the story. It does at times feel like the sex scenes outweigh all others, but I don't feel that they are gratuitous. Other than expensive accessories and a lust for skyscrapers, it is what Bardem's character spends most of his time and energy on. Maria de Medeiros and Maribel Verdú are excellent, especially the latter, who delivers a pretty brave performance. The cinematography is really beautiful and well conceived for each stage of the story. And it contains what must be one of my favorite cinematic moments in a long time...Bardem doing a Julio Iglesias karaoke number in a leopard-print robe, black speedo and Catalan barretina.

If the darkly comic tone of this film strikes you as a bit odd for what on the surface is a straight forward young-man-on-the-make drama, welcome to the world of Bigas Luna. What this is really is a satire on supposed masculine virtues in Latino culture. The main character, a wannabe real estate mogul played by Javier Bardem, throughout the film achieves material ambitions and rising to dominate others in classic alpha dog fashion, yet his victories seem hollow and shallow. This is all intended, but Luna was not aiming to create a morality play here. He just wanted to take cheap shots at talentless hacks who succeed on sheer chutzpah, and at cultures who lionize them for their successes however achieved. The main character could have been any ambitious rhymes-with-Rick in any field. One gets the idea that he might even have been based on somebody Luna knew from the film business...

So, announces the DVD. But, this was a disappointing film. Not particularly bad but definitely not that good. Rather more crude and MTV video-like than the more subtle and masterful Jamon Jamon.

None of the characters are likable, the lovely Penelope Cruz of Bigas Luna's first film replaced by vacuous supermodels (in comparison, maybe they are great actresses) and it all reads like a tawdry and cheap paperback that you'd pick up at motorway service station.

Which, maybe is how Luna wanted it. Maybe he really is that repelled by the capitalist, nouveau-riche alpha male who believes his 'balls' not only rule his life but everybody else's, too. I know I am, and most people would be, too. Asked why Javier Bardem's lead character is sporting two gold Rolex's, he announces back "I have two balls, so I have two Rolex's".

Artistically there is little merit to this film, but it is about overblown, over-macho stereotypes and how they think they can walk over everybody. There are nods to Dali (the nude with ants over her pubic region is an extreme example) and there are more phallic insinuations in Goldenballs than any other film I know of. From Gonzalez (Bardem) Towers, intended to be the tallest tower on the Med, in which Luna loosely stretches a fabric of some kind of story around, with his dodgy dealings and cost-cutting.

Like, possibly his Tower, Gonzalez, and his potent sexual erections, does come a cropper, which is of some redemption, admittedly, but not enough to save the film. There's an early role for Benecio del Torro as the Miami-set gardener who happens to do more than service the sprinkler....

What finally made me only award two stars was the poor DVD quality. It's of video standard, plain and simple.

I bought Goldenballs as I wanted the three films in Luna's 'Iberian passion' trilogy, of which it is the middle. I'm seriously hoping that the final part, 'The Tit and the Moon' is an improvement.