Bigas Luna

 I love this guy! My favorite Spanish director (post-Bunuel, of course). His inventive, earthy, erotic and emotionally intense films are sometimes sweet, sometimes savage, but never dull. Like Douglas Sirk or Samuel Fuller, his  savage melodramas will look better and better with time.

Listed Chronologically

BIGAS LUNA COLLECTION [IMPORT 4 DVD BOX SET]     
PAL DVD / Region 2 (Europe)
THE AGES OF LULU (LAS EDADES DE LULU) - 1990

Submerged in the fears of a childhood devoid of affection, fifteen-year old Lulu (Francesca Neri) succumbs to the attraction of a young friend of the family, Pablo. One night he takes her to a concert and after the show, in the back of his car, introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later 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.

Bigas Luna (JAMON JAMON and GOLDEN BALLS) delivers an amazing film that stars Francesca Neri, Oscar Ladoire, Maria Barranco and Fernando Guillen Cuervo.

DVD FEATURES: Newly Remastered Uncut Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish Audio . Optional English subtitles . Trailer

Please note that this version of THE AGES OF LULU is completely uncut & uncensored. The original Tartan DVD release is censored, but the DVD in this box set is uncensored.

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.

DVD FEATURES: Newly Remastered Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish Audio . Optional English subtitles . Trailer

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?

DVD FEATURES: Newly Remastered Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish DTS, Spanish 5.1 and Spanish 2.0 Audio Options . Optional English subtitles . Trailer . Interview with Bigas Luna

THE TIT AND THE MOON (LA TETA Y LA LUNA)- 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 boys search for the perfect breast.

Set in a colorful Catalan resort this exuberant tale of lust and love is a coming of age story with a difference. 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.

DVD FEATURES: Newly Remastered Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish Audio . Optional English subtitles . Trailer . Interview with Bigas Luna

 

Lola (DVD-R)    1985
DVDR / All Regions
Angela Molina stars as a woman torn between her drunken, sadistic but sexually exciting ex and her decent (and non-Spanish) husband. Really just a soap opera, but more upsetting than most horror films. The drunken ex is so horrible you almost can't watch. Luna's films always savage the macho Spanish male, and this is no exception - the guy carries two steel balls in his hand at all times just in case we miss the point. Strong stuff from our favorite Spanish director. You'll want to turn up the brightness control on your TV, as this transfer is quite dark. The dubbing is odd - it's British, so the lowlife is dubbed by a cockney, and Lola sounds exactly like Julie Christie.

 

Anguish (DVD)    1986
AngustiaAnchor Bay DVD / Region 1 (USA)
Inventive violent and disturbing horror film from Spain's greatest contemporary director (sorry Almadovar). Michael Lerner loses his job as an optometrist, and his weird mother (Zelda Rubenstein, the midget medium from POLTERGEIST) hypnotizes him into going on a mad eye-gouging murder spree. Remarkable film-within-a-film that keeps you off-balance. Theatrical release carried warnings regarding use of subliminal effects on soundtrack. Well-recorded English dialogue. J-D-C Scope.

Region 1 . Widescreen . Color

 

Edades De Lulu (The Ages Of Lulu) (Import DVD)    1990
PAL DVD / Region 2 (Europe)
Cited in a women's magazine recently as one of the ten sexiest art films. Lovely art film from the great Bigas Luna that is more meaningfully sexual than almost any of the erotic art films of the last two decades.

LULU begins with the lightest of touches, as a saucy rite-of-passage story following the progress of a naive young girl who is taken as sexual property by her more worldly husband-to-be, then takes a tragic turn as Lulu becomes captain of her own sexuality, which paradoxically confines her.

Luna is no propagandist, so his characters defy gender-politics labeling: he devastates the male in all his films, while showing women to be complicit in all of their man-related misfortunes. Luna heroines are often akin to alcoholics. They struggle with their ingrained need for subjugation, break away from men, find themselves heroic but incomplete in their independence, and return-not happier, but feeding something primal that trumps happiness.

Lulu's discovery of her own extreme sexual passions becomes more nightmare than empowerment, in contrast to her girlish raptures in the earlier sex scenes at a time when she was free from responsibility for who she was (the ultimate freedom, and a freedom that can never be won or asserted) Eventually her increasingly deviant outlets scare her away from independence. A sad tale.

Noted European actress Francesca Neri is to be applauded for going so far out on an artistic limb throughout, becoming probably the first name actress to have her pubic hair shaved on camera, among other things. She has a remarkable face-a cross between Lee Remick and Juliette Lewis (and slowing turning into Charlotte Rampling as she becomes jaded.)

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 concert and after the show, in the back of his car, introduces Lulu to her first sexual experience. Years later 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. Bigas Luna (JAMON JAMON and GOLDEN BALLS) delivers an amazing film that stars Francesca Neri, Oscar Ladoire, Maria Barranco and Fernando Guillen Cuervo.

DVD FEATURES: Uncensored Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen (1.85:1) Version . Spanish 5.1, Spanish 2.0 and Italian 2.0 Audio Options . Optional English subtitles . Trailer

Also starring Oscar Ladoire, Maria Barranco and Fernando Guillen Cuervo.

 

Jamon Jamon (Import DVD)    1992
PAL DVD / All Regions
Quirky, comedic and unusually symbolic film from the Spanish master Bigas Luna. Nice production design with clean clear colors and a feeling of space. Jose Luis is an executive at his parents underwear factory where his girlfriend Sylvia works on the shop floor. When Sylvia becomes pregnant, Jose Luis promises her that he will marry her against the wishes of his parents. His mother is determined to break her son's engagement to this girl from a lower-class family, and hires Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter to seduce Sylvia" Includes an intriguing dream sequence and nude bullfighting. For the cheap thrills crowd, Penelope Cruz's breasts get a great deal of exposure throughout. Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Anna Galiena, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Jordi Mollá, Juan Diego, Tomas Penco, Armando del Río.

DVD FEATURES: Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish Audio . English Subtitles . Trailer

 

Golden Balls (Huevos De Oro) (US FORMAT DVD)    1993
Huevos de oro; aka Macho; Uova d'oro
DVD / Region 1 (USA)
The male cast is first-rate, including Javier Bardem, Maribel Verdu and Maria de Medeiros. Though Bardem is terrific as the signature Bigas Luna macho anti-hero it is Benicio Del Toro's small role as a randy gardener that probably accounts for this movie finally being released here. Forms an unofficial trilogy with "Jamon, Jamon" and "La Teta y La Luna." All the women (Maria de Medeiros, Maribel Verdú, Elisa Tovati, Raquel Bianca) are sexy in the strong, earthy almost elemental way Luna conceives Spanish womanhood. Penelope Cruz's breasts steal the show. That may seem a crass comment, but it's one of those instances where a director tries to really capture something. Luna always has strong ideas about men's and women's bodies and in Cruz's big scene he sees to have taken pains show her breasts as the perfect realization of every textural association and fantastic imagining he has on the topic of breasts. "Directed by acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Jose Juan Bigas Luna, HUEVOS DE ORO (GOLDEN BALLS) stars Javier Bardem in his breakthrough role (for which he also received a Goya Award nomination). In this satire of Latin machismo and the excesses of the 1980s, Bardem plays Benito Gonzalez, who dreams of building a mighty skyscraper and thereby securing fame and wealth for himself. His main advantages are his uncontrollable self-assurance and skills as a lothario. He marries the daughter of a rich banker while keeping a mistress on the side, but his betrayal of both women begin to destroy his plans for the building as well as his chauvinist self-confidence. Bigas Luna brings his trademarks-an honest exploration of sexuality and surrealistic imagery-to this tale of male egotism and its undoing." English Dubbed.
 

Tit And The Moon (Import DVD)    1994
PAL DVD / All Regions
"A Sexy, Surreal Fairytale..." Charming movie. Certainly earthy by American standards. Completing Bigas' saucy trilogy begun with Jamon Jamon and Golden Balls, "La Teta y la luna" is the bizarre story of Tete, a little boy looking for a breast to love. If "The Wonder Years" had featured lots of nudity, toe sucking, milk spurting breasts, and stage shows starring a man on a Harley whose claim to fame is the violence of his farts (!) it would be like this, but still not as good. After "losing" the love of his mother's breasts to his new-born brother Tete finds a new love on the chest of French dancer Mathilda May (the spooky nude vampire in Lifeforce, she of the remarkably shaped breasts). The opening is stunning - a lengthy sequence of competing factions of townspeople erecting immense and dangerous human-pyramids called "castles". We're so blasé about special effects that it took me a minute to appreciate that these people were REALLY doing this.

Set in a colorful Catalan resort this exuberant tale of lust and love is a coming of age story with a difference. 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.

DVD FEATURES: Anamorphic (16:9) Widescreen Version . Spanish audio . Optional English subtitles . Interview with director Bigas Luna . Film notes . Original theatrical trailer

 

Bambola (DVD-R)    1996
DVDR / All Regions
Another highly charged film form this Spanish auteur. Bambola (Valeria Marini) plays a woman whose journey into sexual eccentricity is begun when she goes to visit someone in prison. She's forced into a relationship with a different convict, and her return visits become repeated violent interludes. When he gets out all hell is going to break loose. Another superior Bigas Lunas study of the voluntary physical and sexual victimization of women. There is nothing scarier or more disgusting than the brutal macho types that Lunas attacks in his films. English subtitles.

 
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