`Jamon Jamon' Takes Farcical Look At Lust

Movie review

XXX "Jamon Jamon," with Stefania Sandrelli, Penelope Cruz, Anna Galiena, Javier Bardem, Juan Diego, Jordi Molla. Directed by Bigas Luna, from a script by Luna and Cuca Canais. Broadway Market Cinemas. No rating; includes nudity, rough language, sex scenes. -------------------------------------------------------------------

Like Pedro Almodovar's last picture, "High Heels," this Spanish prize-winner is an unwieldy mixture of erotic farce and energetic soap opera, with a final wrenching twist that suggests Greek tragedy.

In its own dizzy way, it's quite entertaining, thanks in large part to unimprovable casting and a script that never stops being outrageous. But it seems to be reaching for profundity, and that's always just beyond its grasp.

"Jamon Jamon" can be read as a cautionary tale about the deadly consequences of parental intervention in the love lives of their children, or as a social commentary about incestuous relationships in post-Franco Spain, or as a political tract about a bored, bourgeois family exploiting working-class victims.

But mostly it's about sex. Stefania Sandrelli, whose career was launched when she played the fickle young seducer of Marcello Mastroianni in "Divorce Italian Style" three decades ago, plays the wealthy, possessive mother of a handsome wimp (Jordi Molla) who plans to marry a factory worker (Penelope Cruz) who happens to be the daughter of a local prostitute (Anna Galiena).

Sandrelli, who helps run an underwear factory and spends her days examining videos of the crotches of male models, hires one of the young hunks (Javier Bardem, who appeared in "High Heels") to seduce Cruz. Sandrelli also beds Bardem, while her bewildered son tries to find solace with Galiena.

Meanwhile, Sandrelli's frustrated husband (Juan Diego) is involved in his own sexual misadventure, Sandrelli and Bardem demonstrate the aphrodisiacal powers of garlic, Molla and Bardem agree that Cruz's breasts taste like potato omelets, and, in a carefully moonlit scene, Bardem and a pal experiment with nude bullfighting.

By film's end, hardly a character is left who hasn't had carnal knowledge of the others or at least lusted after them - or their cooking abilities. As a luscious advertisement for food and sex and the link between them, the movie is right up there with "Like Water For Chocolate" and "Tampopo."

The director and co-writer, Bigas Luna, best-known here for his intriguing 1987 horror film "Anguish," describes "Jamon Jamon" as "an ironic drama" with an ending that is "almost like a religious ritual ceremony."

Whether you're prepared for that finale will depend on how seriously you take everything that precedes it.