Watching 3 random Spanish films to celebrate their World Cup Win

After Spain won the World Cup last week, I found myself wanting to explore Spanish Cinema more. Having thus far only touched the surface with the likes of Pedro Almodóvar and Alejandro González Iñárritu, I decided to watch three films by three Spanish directors I hadn’t heard of before.

Jamón Jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992)

This still from Jamón Jamón, featuring Javier Bardem, basically sums up the whole film. It’s macho, it’s raunchy, it’s Spanish. Jamón Jamón encapsulates the stagnant way of life in rural Spain, executed through a singular fly cast to float around throughout and some excellent montages; everything is sexual because it’s all anyone can do for fun. Even the wealthiest family in the town runs a successful underwear brand, where Silvia (Penélope Cruz) works as a labourer. José Luis (Jordi Mollà), the son and heir of the family lingerie business, falls for Silvia, much to his mother’s dismay, as Silvia’s mother is a sex worker. José Luis’s mother decides to hire Raul (Javier Bardem), who is an amateur bullfighter and Jamón salesman, to seduce Silvia and sway her from José Luis and the family business. Without spoiling anything, it all becomes a huge mess. But the theme of hypermasculinity is much more grasping. The notion of the film being centred around legs of ham conjures images of cavemen and the idea that meat is for men - men do the killing. There’s a particularly interesting shot of José Luis lying on the floor with a leg of ham, his arm in frame with his expensive watch, suggesting that he doesn’t possess enough masculinity; he is from the modern world, and therefore will inevitably not win over Silvia. There’s something quite sexually tense about the two men fighting over Silvia, often shirtless, with a giant statue of a bull and its testicles dangling over the town and a billboard of Raul’s crotch to promote the underwear business (oh yes, he models too). There’s also some playful naked bullfighting between Raul and his friend, if that’s the right word for it. Los hombres son homosexuales. This is the type of stuff that happens when you don’t put a cinema in a town.

Rotten Tomatoes: 67%

Letterboxd Average rating: 3.2/5

My rating: 3.5/5

Abre Los Ojos (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)

(Open Your Eyes)

Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos) follows César (Eduardo Noriega), a young, handsome bachelor navigating his twenties in Madrid. After a car crash that leaves him disfigured, he struggles to find meaning in his life, after no longer looking the way he used to, his natural good looks and charm being the usual catalyst for his seducing of women. Eventually, lines between reality get blurred, and the film becomes pretty hard to follow, with not everything feeling entirely stable. You never really got to know César; the soundtrack is quite repetitive, and it feels like there is always a noise in the background, but maybe that was my dodgy stream. To me, it feels very influenced by Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), with some wonderful spiral shots, and an ending scene on a rooftop in Madrid that practically mirrors the same ending of the 1958 Old Hollywood film. I didn’t know at the time of watching that it was remade into an American version with Penelope Cruz (again) and Tom Cruise - Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001), which I had seen before and was also a bit of a brain fart. Amenábar has spoken about how he dislikes Abre Los Ojos, but there are some engaging motifs in the film, and I liked seeing a film set in Madrid and following the nightlife scene, something I haven’t really come across before.

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Letterboxd Average Rating: 3.9/5

My rating: 3/5

Sorda (Eva Libertad, 2025)

(Deaf)

Sorda follows Ángela (Miriam Garlo) and her journey with pregnancy and motherhood as a deaf person, attempting to find her feet with these two life-changing instances, in a world that does not cater to her way of communication. Eva Libertad directs the film, and Ángela is played by Miriam Garlo, Libertad’s sister, who is deaf in real life. The film is an interesting watch as an English-speaking person, given that there is Spanish dialogue often paired with what I’m assuming is Spanish Sign Language (LSE), with accompanying subtitles for both. It’s like listening to ‘LUX’ by Rosalía for anyone else who only speaks one language. Libertad’ portrays the feeling of exclusion in such a raw way for Ángela, intersecting between different points of view, but instead of through cinematography, through sound, by sometimes playing dialogue in the film, and sometimes displaying Ángela’s point-of-view, just signs, no sound. There is a particularly horrific birthing scene, which highlights just how far behind the world still is for people dealing with such impairments. My only catch with Sorda is its title, translating in English to Deaf; I felt whilst watching that there could have been a more creative way to encompass Ángela’s experience, rather than minimising it to a brief way of describing her.

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Letterboxd Average Rating: 4/5

My Rating: 3.5/5

I’m no expert on Spanish cinema, and I’m aware that these three films likely do not encapsulate all that it has to offer, but it was so fun discovering new films and directors; I would love to know what other people’s thoughts are on these.