Completing Bigas Luna's saucy Spanish trilogy that began with Jamon Jamon and Golden Balls The Tit and the Moon tells of a young boy's search for the perfect breast. Set in a colourful Catalan resort this exhuberant tale of lust and love is a coming of age story with a differnce. Tete is a nine year old boy who is consumed with jealousy at his baby brother's monopoly of his mum's nipples. After asking the moon for a breast of his own his pr
Submerged in the fears of a childhood devoid of affection fifteen-year old Lulu succumbs to the attraction of a young friend of the family Pablo. One night he takes her to a rock concert and after the show in the back of his car introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later when Pablo returns from teaching in the U.S. the two meet again and get married. He creates for her a world apart a private universe in which time has no meaning. But Lulu tires of living in an unreal world and leaves home. She begins to hang out in shady bars where she plunges helplessly but feverishly into the hell of dangerous apparently forbidden desires
Salted pork shanks as leitmotiv in Jamón Jamón a dark comedy about an absurd love triangle: this is what post-Franco cine is all about (food and sex). Spanish tortillas (i.e., potato omelets) are also big in this one. Director José Juan Bigas Luna is intelligent, wry, and--despite the formulaic narrative that melodrama must essentially contain--unpredictable. At times his film exudes a certain Almodóvar flavour, but there is an edge, perhaps even heavy-handedness, to the dark humour that is either Luna's success or his downfall. The film garnered the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, after all. Try to follow: sexy Penelope Cruz (Belle Epoque) is growing up with her mother outside town on the wrong side of the highway. Together they run a truck stop where cars and life literally race past. Cruz is in love with Jordí Molla, by whom she is pregnant, but Molla's bourgeois mother, played by Anna Galiena (Being Human), thinks he can and should do better (of course, neither Cruz nor his mother knows of the erotic, avian interludes Molla enjoys on the side.) To save her son from the lower classes, Galiena hires Javier Bardem, a muscular, pretty man (whose regular consumption of the pork he distributes for a living has enhanced his sexual appeal) to pursue Cruz. The dark comedy finds a proper ending to the triangle in a grotesque but comedic landscape of death. This is not a cookie-cutter movie but rather one that will resonate with both your light and dark sides. After each surprise, you'll chuckle, feel guilty, and chuckle again. --Erik Macki, Amazon.com
Salted pork shanks as leitmotiv in Jamón Jamón a dark comedy about an absurd love triangle: this is what post-Franco cine is all about (food and sex). Spanish tortillas (i.e., potato omelets) are also big in this one. Director José Juan Bigas Luna is intelligent, wry, and--despite the formulaic narrative that melodrama must essentially contain--unpredictable. At times his film exudes a certain Almodóvar flavour, but there is an edge, perhaps even heavy-handedness, to the dark humour that is either Luna's success or his downfall. The film garnered the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, after all. Try to follow: sexy Penelope Cruz (Belle Epoque) is growing up with her mother outside town on the wrong side of the highway. Together they run a truck stop where cars and life literally race past. Cruz is in love with Jordí Molla, by whom she is pregnant, but Molla's bourgeois mother, played by Anna Galiena (Being Human), thinks he can and should do better (of course, neither Cruz nor his mother knows of the erotic, avian interludes Molla enjoys on the side.) To save her son from the lower classes, Galiena hires Javier Bardem, a muscular, pretty man (whose regular consumption of the pork he distributes for a living has enhanced his sexual appeal) to pursue Cruz. The dark comedy finds a proper ending to the triangle in a grotesque but comedic landscape of death. This is not a cookie-cutter movie but rather one that will resonate with both your light and dark sides. After each surprise, you'll chuckle, feel guilty, and chuckle again. --Erik Macki, Amazon.com
Ruthless stud Benito Gonzalez (Javier Bardem wants wealth women and to erect a skyscraper in his own honour. In order to achieve this he marries a sophisticated daughter of a rich banker Marta (Maria De Medeiros) but keeps mistress Claudia (Maribel Verdu) on the side. When Marta and Claudia realise they are both victims of Benito's greed things for Benito begin to crumble. Has Benito's luck finally left him?
Diana Diaz has always dreamt of being a star - and she'll do anything to make it. In Hollywood she tries desperately to land any part she can. Used and abused by agents and producers alike Diana soon discovers how hard you have to climb to reach the heights of success in a world of lies luxury and fame where nothing is quite what it seems. Be careful what you wish for - you might just get it.
Golden Balls (1993): Ruthless stud Benito Gonzalez (Javier Bardem wants wealth women and to erect a skyscraper in his own honour. In order to achieve this he marries a sophisticated daughter of a rich banker Marta (Maria De Medeiros) but keeps mistress Claudia (Maribel Verdu) on the side. When Marta and Claudia realise they are both victims of Benito's greed things for Benito begin to crumble. Has Benito's luck finally left him? Jamon Jamon (1992): Headstrong senorita Silvia (Penelope Cruz) becomes pregnant to village Mummy's-boy Jose (Jordi Mulla). Silvia's father has left town and her mother Carmen (Anna Galiena) is forced to become the town prostitute. Jose's overbearing mother Conchita (Stefania Sandrelli) fears her son will marry the daughter of a scarlet woman and takes action...she hires sexy young Raul (Javier Bardem) who works in the ham factory and enjoys nude bullfighting to seduce Silvia. What ensues is a series of chaotic and frantic couplings testosterone overload breasts that taste of ham and a duel to the death with a side of bacon. Tit & The Moon (1994): Completing Bigas Luna's saucy Spanish trilogy that began with Jamon Jamon and Golden Balls The Tit and the Moon tells of a young boy's search for the perfect breast. Set in a colourful Catalan resort this exhuberant tale of lust and love is a coming of age story with a differnce. Tete is a nine year old boy who is consumed with jealousy at his baby brother's monopoly of his mum's nipples. After asking the moon for a breast of his own his prayers are answered with the arrival of Estrellita (Mathilda May) a beautiful French dancer. But the course of true love doesn't run smooth and Tete finds stiff competition for her affection. She is deeply in love with her cabaret partner Maurice the flatulent motorbike rider and is also being pursued by Miguel the hunky flamenco-singing teenager. Ages of Lulu (1990): The story of a young woman's descent into the kinky and dangerous sexual underground in Madrid.
The Ages of Lulu is a gruelling sexual odyssey from Spanish director Bigas Luna, made immediately prior to his popular trilogy Jamón, jamón (1992), Golden Balls (1993) and The Tit and the Moon (1994). Starting as the somewhat queasy story of the young Lulu's affair with the manipulative Pablo (Oscar Ladoire), the movie takes a much darker turn once they are wed. It is conventional cinematic wisdom that there's no such thing as sex after marriage, but here Lulu's husband incomprehensibly leads her into blindfolded incest, then is heartbroken when she reacts with disgust. Soon Lulu (superbly played by Francesca Neri from ingénue to hardened 30-something), is paying gay men for group sex, eventually becoming an unwilling attraction in a commercial sado-machochistic orgy. The closest most UK audiences will have come to this before is in Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and Crimes of Passion (1984), and it is surely one of the most gut-churningly nightmarish scenes ever passed for home viewing. While Ages of Lulu may function as a reactionary warning against the wilder shores of sex, Luna's intention remains unsatisfyingly enigmatic, since the script is under-written and psychologically unconvincing. The end result is pretentious, repellent pornography which degrades human beings of any sexual persuasion. On the DVD: The Ages of Lulu is transferred at an anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 and image quality is very good, though in some scenes very slightly soft. The film can be watched with or without English subtitles, and the sound is unremarkable stereo. The main extras are a seven-page essay on Bigas Luna and five pages detailing the now restored 110 seconds of cuts made to the 1998 video release. The main title still contains 65 seconds of alternate footage to the cinema original for legal reasons. Also included are filmographies of Lunas and Oscar Ladoire, two trailers plus trailers for six other films. --Gary S Dalkin
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