Jamon Jamon | 
| Director: Bigas Luna
Actors: Penelope Cruz, Stefania Sandrelli, Anna Galiena, Juan Diego, Javier Bardem
Studio: Fox Lorber
List Price: $19.98
Buy Used: $6.62
You Save: $13.36 (67%)
New (3) Used (17) Collectible (2) from $6.62
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 6453
Format: Color, Ntsc
Languages: English (Subtitled), Spanish (Original Language), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 6304326297
UPC: 720917012599
EAN: 9786304326299
ASIN: 6304326297
Theatrical Release Date: February 1994
Release Date: November 11, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Salted pork shanks as leitmotiv in 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 Jose Juan Bigas Luna's Jamon Jamon is intelligent, wry, and--despite the formulaic narrative that melodrama must essentially contain--unpredictable. At times his film exudes a certain Almodovar flavor, but there is an edge, perhaps a heavy-handedness, to the dark humor 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 highway, 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 Jordi Molla, by whom she is pregnant. 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, hmm, 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. This is not a cookie-cutter movie but rather one that will resonate with both your light and dark sides. After each surprise, you'll chuckle, feel guilty, and chuckle again. --Erik Macki
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Two words, Penelope Cruz January 13, 2001
Enrique Torres (San Diegotitlan, Califas)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
O.K. it may not be a five star movie, more like four but if you're a Penelope Cruz fan like me you'll love it. Seeing her half clothed body frequently throughout the movie makes you glad they invented rewind and pause controls on your antiquated vcr. Seriously though this is a very sexy and smart movie about two of the things most of us love most, food and sex. Spanish cinema has a certain flair for exploiting those issues most dear to us in the most unusual manner. The movie is very funny, more so if you understand Spanish culture, and the imagery used to convey the issues at hand are most visually dramatic. The story evolves primarily around the life of Jose Luis who is the wealthy son of a domineering mother whose family is in the underwear business. Not sexy yet? Enter Javier Barden("High Heels" and "Live Flesh)" as Raul, a novice bullfighter, underwear model and soon to hired lover to interfere with Jose Luis's love interest. He's a confident Spanish stud who takes no prisoners in his conquering of women. Still doesn't sound sexy? O.K., now for the best part of this movie, Penelope Cruz is Sylvia the pregnant girlfriend of Jose Luis and is the leading lady in this tale of twisted love triangles. The sexy Sylvia is torn and her future in-laws make her decision more difficult. Lots of unpredictable liasons develop that may be immoral but if taken as a satirical romp quite funny and entertaining as opposed to shocking. Some of the scenes are a riot like when the two machos sneak into a bull ranch late at night for a little clandestine bullfighting by the moonlight. The daring bravado of the two machos is illustrated so beautifully and the scene transition is just as wild as they run from their persuers.Without describing and ruining the scene suffice to say that the fact that two young men would go to such great lenghts to prove their macho is hilarious. It is scenes like this that make for memorable Spanish cinema with a quirky message hidden in celluloid reminiscent of Aldomovar. Very funny stuff worth the price of admission alone just to see a very young Penelope Cruz at her sexiest.
 A distinctly unfunny and depressing "comedy." December 22, 2000
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
This movie was advertised as a sexy Spanish gem in the tradition of "Belle Epoque" or "Women on the Verge...", but it lacks Almodovar's verve or Belle Epoque's compassion. The movie's unwholesome message, reinforced in every frame, appears to be nothing more than the proposition that women are harlots and men are pigs.
A Very Spanish Movie March 19, 2000
Tania Martuscelli (Brazil)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"Jamon, Jamon" is a kind of "souvenir" of spanish culture. Bigas Luna is fantastic - always - and Bardem in this movie is still an unknowed actor, at least for "americans viewers" or maybe "americans 'voyers'" (because his caracter is an almost sexual [freak] guy...)There is something surrealist in the movie, and this is what make it very spanish. After Garcia Lorca and other artists from the begining of the century, everything in Spain seems surrealist: things are not an easy "nonsense", but a different way to show the real world where the Moral does not exist, and Poetry and a very fine point of view are leaders. It's a five star movie for the ones who are interested in culture. Also, if you like the most famous Spain sons - Pedro Almodovar and Joaquin Cortez - it's a nice excuse to know some of their "relatives" (olders and youngers)and to begin a "cultural spanish research" just for fun (and just for life)!
Sexy and funny December 17, 1999
ray gonzales (Denver)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This movie is so sexy it make Like Water for Chocolate seem drab. And is there any actress out there sexier than Penelope Cruz?
 Like a potato omelette ("tortilla de patatas") September 20, 2001
Manny Hernandez (Bay Area, CA)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This movie by Bigas Luna combines elements of irony and surrealism in a very disfunctional setting where almost nothing works the way it's supposed to, based on "normal" thinking (whatever that translates into for each and everyone of us). The movie, almost from beginning to end is very unpredictable (which is good) and brings out very sexually-charged performances by the entire cast, but very specially by now-superstars Penelope Cruz (Woman on Top, Blow, Captain Corelli's...) and Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls).My "issue" with this movie is that it doesn't qualify as a comedy altogether, due some of its very disturbing scenes. It also doesn't succeed, in my opinion, at being a parody of the Spanish macho man and some other typical (yet repressed during the Franco times) elements of Spanish culture. And finally, although it attempts to (with the pig, bull and ham imagery), I don't think of it necessarily as a good surrealist movie (in the style of a Bunuel or a Fellini). I think it is more a combination of the sexual drive typically behind Bigas Luna's movies and a good dose of Oedipus complex sprayed (portrayed in an interesting way). Trying to be too many things, it ends up being like a potato omelette ("tortilla de patatas".) In all honesty, in the end it left me with nothing but a few laughs at its ironies.
|
|
|
