Jamon Jamon (1993)

Too much of everything

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Bigas Luna's "Jamón Jamón" is one of many Spanish black comedies focusing on relationships, in this case between a young woman working in an underwear factory, and the son of the factory's owner. It's the only Luna movie that I've seen, although I understand that his movies often have food themes. The movie also functions as a look at the contrasts between Spain's past and present, just as much as it looks at the relationships among the various characters. Some of the scenes seem as if their purpose is to shock you, but the whole thing adds up to a solid focus on its characters. Who would've guessed that two decades after the release, Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz would be an item?I bet that those things DO taste fine!

'Jamón, Jamón', made in typical Bigas Luna style, is an amusing mindf**k of an erotic comedy. So one can easily expect a lot of shagging, nudity, passion and vulgarity in this entertaining satire. The melodramatic acting goes totally in sync with the story that is full of playful sarcasm. Luna toys with ideas by 'making fun' of many aspects of the Spanish culture. His actors don't shy away from baring it all sans inhibition. Javier Bardem and Jordi Molla are very good as two lovers competing with each other. Stefania Sandrelli plays the part of a horny manipulative MILF very well and Anna Galiena is deliciously hot. However, it is the then 18-year-old Penelope Cruz who steals the show by displaying innocence and sensuality with equal doze. Bigas Luna also references to several movies that clearly have inspired him like Ken Russell's 'Women in Love'. In addition, there are numerous underlying subtexts concerning taboo themes such as incest and bestiality. 'Jamón, Jamón' clearly isn't everyone's cup of tea and many conservatives might find it downright offensive. But someone who might be interested in a cinematic carnal entertainment satire ought to see this.

The only reason I am giving this movie a three is because there are a few funny scenes in what is mostly a very poor film. You might object to the somewhat boring relentlessly and unthoughtfully stereotypical treatment of Spanish love relations, or to what is, in my experience, the most facile use of symbolism (bull=phallic=machoman) in film (which is saying quite a bit since, sorry, but film is still, as Werner Herzog remarked, "The illiterate genre"). The comic potential of the movie---for it does start out with a few possibilities---is wasted on a botched attempt at drama, which, oddly enough, is so bad that it is risible. Again and again I am surprised how film-makers can put together such complete rubbish---and with impunity. A waste of celluloid and time.

Jamon Jamon... And yet another Spanish sex comedy. This one tries to satirize macho dominance, although at times one wonders if director Bigas Luna is just using the film as a card announcing that he's coming out of the closet, from the opening shots of Javier Bardem's rear and crotch. Too many elements seem familiar (pregnant unmarried girl, a disapproving mother, a love triangle that turns into a quadrangle that turns into a more complicated geometric figure), as if the story was coming out of the Manual for Writing Foreign Films That Get Played In the USA. Actually, despite the familiarity, this part is charming and captures your interest... if you are into romantic/erotic comedies. Many good jokes fly by. Some genuinely erotic moments happen. Then Bigas Luna tries to make it as offbeat as possible by displaying many scenes of cruelty towards animals, incessantly buzzing flies, a dream sequence, slow-motion shots, the occasional pretentious "repulsion" shot (e.g. a lizard crawling out of the eye socket of a doll), anti-erotic close-ups of lips during erotic scenes, and taking many psychodynamic twists that Freud would have been interested in. The deeper you get into the film, the more these scenes happen. Unfortunately, it is mostly badly done and pretentious. Some of it is due to low-budget limitations and lame editing. But some of it is just plain bad film-making and lazy writing. Please, everyone involved in Spanish-language "art" wannabe films, be you Spanish, Peruvian, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, or from any other applicable country: you do not qualify as an art film just because in the end you randomly kill off one of the main characters and lazily dodge writing a resolution to the complicated scenario you created! And no, it does not make it better if this happens in the middle of a desert! Stop killing off people in the desert! Most people don't live in a desert, much less live there, hence its name! Sand does not make art! Besides, the death is not even believable! Also, if your name is not John Woo or Brian DePalma, I'm sorry, you should not use slow-motion, because you don't know how to use it. As for the film's main satirical point, it seems that at one point Bigas Luna wanted to show women dominating men who pretended to be strong macho guys, but at the end if you re-examine it, it seems that Bigas Luna is really showing older people dominating younger people sexually, regardless of gender. If anything, at least the actors are game, particularly Bardem, Galiena, and Cruz, although Penelope Cruz fans should know that she doesn't look as pretty here as she does in other films. People who are just watching this for erotic value should quit half-way into the movie, as in "Betty Blue", as the latter part of the movie leaves an anti-erotic taste.In the end, all of the interesting scenes and ideas are ruined by misguided aspirations towards art. A shame.