Sick Product of a Sick System

Fantastic!

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.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

To be honest, I remember to have checked this movie during my college years as it was called "scandalous". But I left before its end as it seemed a bit too raw.Today, Penélope fairy changes everything. It's funny to see that she didn't really change over the years and that she was as good in her first movie than actually. It's also funny to see how her path crossed her future husband. They were already one soul in "sin noticias de dios" and there, their first movie meeting makes good memories: running after a pig in the night!Sure, it's always raw, messy and tidy and the movie is disrespectful of a lot of values: the love stories shuffle like a deck of cards, the beloved animals are ultimately eaten. But finally, the movie is totally mastered: there is a real story here as it pushes every character. In addition, the setting is interesting: Sure, it's Spain as they speak Spanish but we can't locate them as it's only a solitary house, next to a road in a desert landscape and a few interiors. It has the feeling of a Lynch movie all the more than it had strange dreams, bizarre shots of food, animals… As it deals ultimately about the relationships between a rich and a poor family, food, love, sex, it's very basic, clear, and ultimately, i liked it.

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?

What is it about this movie that so many people love it and others hate it with the same intensity? Could it be the bestial nature of the sub-text? Do those who throw scorn on this piece of surrealistic tortilla live so far from their darker carnal nature that they have to express distaste, cast it out, make it shadow, unclean? This film comes from a long line of Spanish surrealist cinema. One could argue that surrealism on film had it's beginnings in Spain and is now only practiced in the Spanish speaking world with any degree of sophistication (barring perhaps David Lynch). So much of this film is iconic, totemic and archetypal. Bigas in fine Spanish culinary tradition makes a great paella with these icons, 'the lonely dry, dusty road', 'the arid landscape with its passionate inhabitants', 'the machismo homo-erotica of bullfighting', 'the domineering matriarch', 'the loving whore', 'the battle of the hams' and the list goes on. Maybe if you haven't been to central Spain you won't have touched and tasted these oh so familiar dishes but they exist throughout societies. In Spain they just turned them into cultural landmarks, olé. The only reason for the lower rating of this is that Bigas Luna surpassed this film a couple of times with 'Golden Balls' and the simply brilliant 'Tit and the Moon'

I'm not sure what to think about this movie. It was quite confusing at times. I'm not sure why the trucks kept being shown passing by. Was it to make the movie longer? Or was it transition between scenes? One thing good about this movie, was the good looking people. Penelope Cruz looked pretty because she was very natural looking, a bit whore-like, but she didn't look fake. Of all the foreign movies I've seen, all of the other actors were new to me. (spoilers?) When I rented this movie, I expected something a little more than what was shown. The ending really blew me off. The characters were just shown crying, then the movie ended. There was no "real" ending. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of the characters. Another thing that confused me was the "bullfighting" scene. What was really the point of the nudity? And the fighting with the hams. That part was actually kind of funny though. I would recommend this movie to anyone who would like to see it, but just keep in mind that it is not that big of a deal