Jamon Jamon

Jamón, jamón (1992) is Bigas Luna's Spanish erotic dark comedy you can watch online on iFILM — and the film that introduced both Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem to international audiences in their first screen roles.

Set in the parched Catalan countryside beneath Osborne bull billboards, the story starts with a mother's interference. Doña Concha runs a lingerie factory and refuses to accept that her son José Luis plans to marry Silvia, whose mother works as a prostitute. She hires Raúl — a handsome ham-warehouse worker with bullfighter ambitions — to seduce Silvia away. Her scheme quickly escapes control, and the desires running among all five characters rearrange into something far less tidy than Concha imagined.

Luna shoots hunger of every kind with the same frank gaze, and the film earns its reputation as one of the wilder Spanish comedies of its decade. The final confrontation — two men swinging cured hams at each other in a desert — is the kind of image that stays. Stream Jamón, jamón (1992) online on iFILM.