Jamón, Jamón

This is 'Carry On' as scripted by Lorca, a hysterically sombre sex farce pointing up the connections between sex and food. The title is an obscure sexual compliment: machinist Silvia (Cruz) enslaves wealthy stripling José with her ham-flavoured nipples. But as one might expect from a man so fixated, José is in thrall to his mother Conchita, who doesn't want him married to the daughter of the town whore. Conchita enrols a chunky would-be torero, Raúl, to distract the nymphet. Before long he's up under Silvia's miniskirt, and it's bound to end in tears. One just wants to slap Silvia, a woman who habitually traipses around wailing in wet, clingy, baby-doll dresses. But there are compensations in Sandrelli's monstrous Conchita and Bardem's hilarious Raúl. The sex scenes are so bizarre as to be parodic and it all looks terribly ugly. But wonderful vignettes of rural life, and a terrific performance from Pablito the piglet. Ham indeed.