Directed by Bigas Luna. Written by Cuca Canals and Bigas Luna
Romance is a non-consensual kiss in the women’s bathroom and your partner describing your breasts to taste like ham and garlic. Romance is falling for anyone who tries hard enough, or even just a little. Romance is unwanted ass grab, an undesired nickname, a can tab for an engagement ring.
If you disagree, Bigas Luna’s Jamón Jamón disagrees with you, as it tells the story of a young factory worker (Penélope Cruz, in her first film role) who’s in love with the son (Jordi Molla) of the factory’s owner (Stefania Sandrelli). The mother is dead-set against her son marrying a working class girl, so she enlists a local ham delivery boy (Javier Bardem) to woo the young woman. She soon struggles to not be wooed herself, because Javier Bardem looks like Javier Bardem.
Penélope Cruz of course also looks like Penélope Cruz, so what chance does Bardem’s poor ham courier stand? His tight pants soon feel even tighter, and feelings might even flutter in his heart. It only gets messier from here.
Jamón Jamón doesn’t have much between the ears, because it’s all between its legs: plot, dialogue, even Luna’s camera can’t stay away from people’s urges and letting them unfold. There’s a throbbing fistful of shots that lock themselves on Bardem’s bulge, and two handfuls of shots that prefer to linger on Cruz’s chest, along with some glances at the rest of the cast in the buff.
The passion, chemistry and general hotness of its cast alone is enough to make Jamón Jamón a steamy affair, but it’s the base, hotheaded kind that’s usually reserved for music videos that needs to get its rocks off quickly, throwing itself into tight embraces, gyrating, grabbing, and eagerly exploring lips. It’s animalistic, far from suave, or alluring.
Luna’s movie is marked by excessive drama, embraces, kisses, embraces, and more kisses, the latter of which get increasingly hard to comprehend. Expect the unexpected, the incomprehensible, the disturbing, and the frivolous, pushing it closer to being a borderline satire of a soap opera where entanglements are tightly tangled along with limbs. The heart wants what it wants, Jamón Jamón says, and the genitals want just about anybody.
The movie does have the dew of seeing stars in their nascence, and easy to see why both Cruz and Bardem would go on to find success (and find each other many years later) as they already exhibit their star-making qualities. Cruz with her fierce gaze and tenderness, Bardem with a boyish insolence that’s hard to not be charmed by.
Jamón Jamón can be a lot of fun but you have to be completely hands-off and just enjoy the histrionics the same way you’d observe a crashout happening across the street or the animals acting out at the zoo. Strangely fascinating and entertaining, all against your better judgment, like watching something less than civilized that you can’t take your eyes off.
Mikkel Frederiksen 