People are voting emotionally.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The acting in this movie is really good.

For clarification purposes: Penélope Cruz was born 1974 in this 1982 film and Stefania Sandrelli plays not the rôle of her mother but that of her character's boyfriend, José Luis.

Jamón, jamón is a dark, sexy, disturbing and very sarcastic romance, that mercilessly satirizes Spanish mentality and culture, though it can't in all honestly be labeled a comedy. It's no surprise that its most passionate advocates, as well as critics, are Spanish; but to the non-Spanish viewer, it's still an entertaining and captivating film. Unfortunately, it suffers from an amateurish execution that sometimes makes it feel more like a Spanish soap opera than a feature, and since the satire will go over many viewers' heads, the poor character development, melodramatic and unconvincing acting, and often mishandled cinematography may be quite off-putting. Director Bigas Luna clearly shares many passions and tastes with the more world-famous Pedro Almodóvar, but he can't match Almodóvar artistry and visual flair; the heavy-handed symbolism, quirky sexuality and scenes that are apparently weird for the sake of weird make it feel like an Almodóvar rip-off (which it's not) and make it harder to appreciate the stronger scenes and the biting satire.For non-Spanish viewers, the film's main draw is getting to see Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem very early in their careers; while their top-billing position make it look like Stefania Sandrelli and Anna Galiena are the stars (probably because they were much bigger names in 1992) Cruz and Bardem are not only the real leads but also provide the film's best acting by far, so much so that whenever the scene cuts to one where neither one appears, the TV-soap feeling is suddenly much more pronounced - Sandrelli, Galiena and Jordi Mollà are ludicrously over-the-top, which is part of the point, but Cruz and Bardem manage to transcend that ludicrousness and their characters' flatness and are enough to make the film flow quite well. Fans of either one should definitely check it out; for them or for anyone else, it's a memorable and unusual film, worth your time, but very flawed and should not be approached with very high expectations.

I saw this many years ago and was surprised at how many people liked it. I ventured to watch a few more popular Spanish films of the time but have yet to find something which I enjoy. Bizarre story lines yes, but so utterly pointless.--Spolier-- The part I most enjoyed was the very end of the film where the main characters all killed each other. What a relief it was for me to see them all killed off and to know that it was finally the end of the show!I would love to find some good Spanish film making, but perhaps the good stuff just isn't getting the publicity?

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.