Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
José Luis has a cushy corporate job at the lingerie factory his mom owns. After he falls in love and proposes to Silvia, a beautiful laborer on the underwear assembly line, his mom enlists Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter, to seduce Silvia.
Jamon Jamon is a distinctively Iberian fever dream — Bigas Luna's debut of his 'Iberian Trilogy' drips with raw sensuality, machismo symbolism, and darkly comic excess that is entirely sui generis. The film's conception — using underwear, ham, bullfighting, and rural Spain as overlapping erotic metaphors — is genuinely singular and establishes a voice unlike almost anything in European cinema of the era. Acting is solid, with a young Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem both electrifying in early roles, though the material occasionally tips into melodrama that strains credibility. Cinematography captures the arid Catalonian landscape with a sweaty, sun-scorched intensity that suits the material but doesn't transcend it technically. The plot is entertaining but somewhat thin, leaning heavily on its atmosphere and archetypes rather than narrative sophistication. The ending is provocative and memorably absurd — a confrontation involving a ham leg — but lands somewhere between inspired and bewildering rather than fully satisfying.