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'
