There’s something fascinating about a movie that has the audacity to look sexuality straight in the face and, without wavering, make fun of the passions that affect each of us. Jamon, Jamon is that type of movie, unashamed to march straight into the territory where American filmmakers fear to tread. Movies brought to life by Hollywood directors reflect an unusual fascination with sex and nudity that comes across as fake and awkward to the audience. Bigas Luna, director of Jamon, Jamon, does not shy away from the desire burning in the hearts of his characters. Instead, he accentuates their passions and pokes fun at the way human behavior can be as easily driven by hormones as it can by rational decisions. Seeing a movie that treats sex as humanity’s most unusual desire instead of a flash of skin and heavy breathing is both refreshing and comically enlightening.

Liberally translated, the title of Jamon, Jamon becomes A Tale of Ham and Passion. The title itself should give a pretty good indication of Luna’s casual treatment of sexuality in the movie, as a part of everyday life. In the film, human passions are portrayed as confusing and undefinable feelings that complicate things. As the opening credits appear, the camera slowly moves back, away from its hiding place behind the phallus of a bull billboard that marks the landscape of a small Spanish town. The rest of the world is irrelevant to the story, and the film concerns itself only with the rural community unified by the town’s main business, an underwear factory whose motto is “You’re a Samson inside.”

Only two types of people exist in the film: the desperate and the desirable. Unlike almost all the other characters, the members of the rich family that owns the Samson factory seem helpless and sexually starved. The son Jose Luis tries to quench his desires between Silvia, his attractive girlfriend, and her mother, a prostitute who works in a local bar. When Jose discovers that Silvia is pregnant, he hastily gropes around in the dirt, slipping the tab from a soda can on her finger as an engagement ring. We suspect that Jose’s feelings for Silvia are closer to lust than love, but Silvia ignores these signs since her family is poor, and she needs any break she can get in life.

Jose’s mother Conchita is too proud of her social position to let her son marry the daughter of a prostitute, and Jose “doesn’t have the balls” to tell her that Silvia is pregnant. Conchita has everything Silvia wants in life: wealth, an easy life, and a closet entirely devoted to her shoes. Despite Jose’s lovesick pleas and half-hearted attempts to justify his position, his mother ignores him, dismissing his behavior as unreasonable.

At the Samson factory, Conchita is responsible for choosing the models (based on how well they fill the company’s underwear). Hoping to disrupt her son’s marriage plans, she approaches Raul, a cocky, well-hung model who considers his sex appeal as strong as the smell of garlic on his breath. Jose is a hapless loser who is completely unaware and unconcerned about Raul’s gradual seduction of Silvia until it is too late.

Jamon, Jamon is a depiction of how decisions can be made based only on the yearnings of the heart and the force of sexual attraction. It is also a portrait of lust (Conchita realizes her own attraction to Raul and orders him to stop seeing Silvia), virility (Raul and his friend bullfight naked in the middle of the night), and impotence (Jose is so frustrated with his weaknesses, he castrates the town’s bull billboard). Luna portrays lives in which love is the result of strong sexual attraction. The movie’s scenes of passion are not typical Hollywood fare, but a hungered frenzy as the characters’ uncontrollable desire makes them clumsy.

Instead of remedying any of the complications that arise, the movie uses each mishap as a building block to its chaotic climax. The end of the film left me wondering how seemingly innocent sexual games could have possibly led to the movie’s irreversibly tragic conclusion. When the story finally reaches its abrupt end, the camera slowly surveys the scene and pans out, leaving the characters etched in the mind. If you think you’ll never be able to forget the end of Reservoir Dogs, check out Jamon, Jamon and see just how far human passions can carry a person.