Jambon, jambon

...to get this movie but it surely helps.

It's a bit sad to see so many reviews which so totally miss the point, and none of them from Spain. One negative reviewer even thought the film was set in Mexico which goes to show how much attention he was paying.

This film is a satire on various aspects of Spanish culture and character, primarily machismo and sexual hypocrisy, but taking in culinary preferences, attitudes to animals and those surreal brandy adverts in the shape of bulls that any visitor to Spain will be familiar with. Bigas Luna chucks it all in the stew and turns the heat up to maximum.

And why are so many people upset by the trucks? The film is set next to one of those long dusty highways that are so common in Spain. Of course there are trucks. Take my tip, go to Spain, rent a car, drive between almost any two big cities, stay in a motel at the side of the road, try and sleep - you will get the idea.

This movie should be a favorite for lovers of black comedy such as "Fargo". The director develops many love triangles, uses dense symbolism and an extremely off-beat yet fast paced editing technique to tell a tale of "ham and passion". It is very funny and Penelope Cruz is terrific. A must see for lovers of satirical black comedies.

Jamón, jamón is a dark, sexy, disturbing and very sarcastic romance, that mercilessly satirizes Spanish mentality and culture, though it can't in all honestly be labeled a comedy. It's no surprise that its most passionate advocates, as well as critics, are Spanish; but to the non-Spanish viewer, it's still an entertaining and captivating film. Unfortunately, it suffers from an amateurish execution that sometimes makes it feel more like a Spanish soap opera than a feature, and since the satire will go over many viewers' heads, the poor character development, melodramatic and unconvincing acting, and often mishandled cinematography may be quite off-putting. Director Bigas Luna clearly shares many passions and tastes with the more world-famous Pedro Almodóvar, but he can't match Almodóvar artistry and visual flair; the heavy-handed symbolism, quirky sexuality and scenes that are apparently weird for the sake of weird make it feel like an Almodóvar rip-off (which it's not) and make it harder to appreciate the stronger scenes and the biting satire.

For non-Spanish viewers, the film's main draw is getting to see Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem very early in their careers; while their top-billing position make it look like Stefania Sandrelli and Anna Galiena are the stars (probably because they were much bigger names in 1992) Cruz and Bardem are not only the real leads but also provide the film's best acting by far, so much so that whenever the scene cuts to one where neither one appears, the TV-soap feeling is suddenly much more pronounced - Sandrelli, Galiena and Jordi Mollà are ludicrously over-the-top, which is part of the point, but Cruz and Bardem manage to transcend that ludicrousness and their characters' flatness and are enough to make the film flow quite well. Fans of either one should definitely check it out; for them or for anyone else, it's a memorable and unusual film, worth your time, but very flawed and should not be approached with very high expectations.

Anyone who can laugh at and perversely admire the absurd spectacle of his or her own grotesquely bizarre and fragile (how small a step to go from ecstatic fulfilment to abuse, and gradual dissipation) sexuality, while actually having sex, can be said to have achieved the detachment necessary to maintain a certain controlled pitch of eroticism within its course, which, needless to add, can be quite stimulating and rewarding. Bigas Luna's handling of the sex scenes in `Jamon, Jamon' always makes that 'laughing-in-the-face- and-midst-of-sexuality-in-order-to-transcend-self-defeating-high-brow-or-

sentimental-hang-ups-with-raw-sometimes-moronic-but-more-often-volcanically -exquisite-lust' attitude fully implicit, and that's why they're especially steeped in a rare erotic tension that smolders. Like most great films, Luna's Venice-Silver-Lion-Winner tries to subvert and break down outmoded but deeply ingrained rituals and methods of communication within society that need to die in order to allow the 'not-so-sly but-not-exactly-explicit-and-heavy-handed-either' imposition of its own patterns as suggestions toward new thinking and new answers to take root.

Want to see a hilarious but serious satirical film that mixes and makes superior use of eroticism, surrealism, gross out scenes, and a fantastic music score ? Look no further than these 90 minutes. As far as I know the longest nose to nose lip kiss with a fly on the face of one of the kissers is in this film. Penelope Cruz in at least 4 sex scenes very generously breastfeeding two different and equally hungry lovers (one of whom happens to be this year's oscar nominated actor Javier Barden) is also in this film and should more than serve to turbocharge red-blooded male libidos. A very gross scene involving a very annoyed pig that comes close to being the only appearance of beastiality in an R-rated film is in this flick. And, oh yeah, in case I forget, the scene of the two guys bullfighting buck naked which puts a new spin on, and pays an homage of sorts to the famous schlong-dangling naked wrestling scene in Ken Russell's `Women in Love' is also in this crazy film. Liked it very much. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, especially for further seriously disturbing the mental imbalance of squeamish Americans used to Julia Roberts Soap Operas.

I wouldn't recommend Jamon Jamon to everyone I know, because the humour and the plot are idiosyncratic, to say the least. I regarded this films as a massive, but not at all serious, send-up of machismo and how it interacts with greed and lust. Above all, it is meant to make you laugh, rather than portray some profound message about the human condition. For example, although I can't speak for the Director, I suspect that the naked bullfight scene was simply meant to be absurd and make you laugh. Anyone who thinks it is pretentious has simply missed the point and is pretentious himself because he is reading things into the scene which are non-existent. Not everyone will find a scene like that funny but I personally was in stitches, as I was during the parrot scene, the ham fight scene and many other eminently unforgettable scenes. What I can't say in all honesty is that everybody else in the auditorium found it quite as funny as I did.