Jamon Jamon [Region 2] [UK Import]
Salted pork shanks as leitmotiv in Jamón Jamón a dark comedy about an absurd love triangle: this is what post-Franco cine is all about (food and sex). Spanish tortillas (i.e., potato omelets) are also big in this one. Director José Juan Bigas Luna is intelligent, wry, and--despite the formulaic narrative that melodrama must essentially contain--unpredictable. At times his film exudes a certain Almodóvar flavour, but there is an edge, perhaps even heavy-handedness, to the dark humour that is either Luna"s success or his downfall. The film garnered the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, after all. Try to follow: sexy Penelope Cruz (Belle Epoque) is growing up with her mother outside town on the wrong side of the highway. Together they run a truck stop where cars and life literally race past. Cruz is in love with Jordí Molla, by whom she is pregnant, but Molla"s bourgeois mother, played by Anna Galiena (Being Human), thinks he can and should do better (of course, neither Cruz nor his mother knows of the erotic, avian interludes Molla enjoys on the side.) To save her son from the lower classes, Galiena hires Javier Bardem, a muscular, pretty man (whose regular consumption of the pork he distributes for a living has enhanced his sexual appeal) to pursue Cruz. The dark comedy finds a proper ending to the triangle in a grotesque but comedic landscape of death. Amazon.com Product DescriptionWhen underwear factory worker Silvia (Penelope Cruz) falls pregnant by her boyfriend and boss Jose Luis (Jordi Mulla), Jose"s domineering mother, Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli) takes immediate action to prevent them getting married. Selecting the sexy would-be bullfighter Raul (Javier Bardem) from the local ham factory, Conchita pays him to seduce Silvia and persuade her to break off the engagement to Jose.