PLOT: During the last months of The Dirty War in Argentina, a political prisoner, Valentin (Diego Luna), and a trans prisoner, Molina (Tonatiuh), are forced to share a cell. Despite their differences, the two become friends. However, unbeknownst to Valentin, the warden is forcing Molina to spy on his cellmate, a fact complicated by their growing intimacy.
REVIEW: Kiss of the Spider Woman has a fascinating legacy that spans literature, cinema, and the stage. Originally written as a novel by Manual Puig, it was turned into a taboo-bursting 1985 film, which won star William Hurt an Oscar. Considered boundary-pushing in its frank depiction of homosexuality, it was later turned into a Tony-award-winning musical. Now it’s getting a lavish movie musical directed by Bill Condon. In addition to movies like Gods and Monsters, Condon also directed one of the better stage-to-screen adaptations, Dreamgirls, and does an excellent job with a film that has the grit and soul of the 1985 movie and the flash and spectacle of the play.
What makes it particularly arresting is how nuanced the two leads, Molina and Valentin, are. Neither is idealized, with them both using each other to some degree, even if the feelings that spring up between them are real – albeit in different ways. Molina, who’s been arrested for allegedly corrupting a minor, identifies as female but initially, is mocked by the macho Valentin, who views his cellmate as somewhat frivolous. But, with the prison guards trying to poison him to extract some information on the rebel group he’s a part of, he starts to rely on Molina to get him through the day, with the later entertaining him by recounting the plot of his favorite musical.
As such, the movie unfolds as a film within a film, with the musical sequences done as a slick, technicolour, classic Hollywood fare, where Molina imagines his favourite actress, Jennifer Lopez’s Ingrid Luna, as the star, opposite Valentin as her love interest. Molina imagines herself as Luna’s closest confidante, and soon, the line between the lives of the two prisoners and the fantasy world that Molina is creating starts to blur.
While Jennifer Lopez’s presence in a major role that prominently displays her singing and dancing talent will likely get butts in seats, the film is grounded by the evolving relationship between the two prisoners. Luna is terrific as the idealistic but calculating Valentin, who uses his cellmates’s unrequited love to help his cause – to some extent. Tonatiuh’s Molina is even more layered. Molina agrees to spy on Valentin but falls in love, unleashing hidden heroic qualities that, as in the movie-within-the-movie, have dire consequences. Both Lunda and Tonatiuh get to thoroughly display their acting chops in both the fantasy and real world sections. Luna, as Valentin, is a driven revolutionary, a real-life Andor if you will, but in the fantasy sequences, is a swashbuckling romantic lead. Tonatiuh, as Molina, identifies as female, but in the fantasy sequences, is one of Lopez’s male suitors, albeit a closeted one that pays homage to kinds of roles played by actors like Jack Carson or Clifton Webb in the forties and fifties. Likewise, the visual style of the film shifts, with DP Tobias A. Schliessler shooting the prison sequences in cold, harsh lighting (full of greys), while the fantasy sequences are in eye-popping technicolor.
While the premise certainly sounds heavy, Condon infused the film with a lot of Hollywood flash and sizzle. However, the songs and musical numbers are confined to the film within the film, making this more realistic as far as big-screen musicals go. It’s precisely the right way to film it, as the power of the story, which reflects grim, real-world events, isn’t diluted. One interesting thing was how uphill a battle Kiss of the Spider Woman had to fight in order to get distribution since I caught it at Sundance (it’s been barely promoted), as it feels fairly commercial, even if, at its soul, it is a desperately sad story that doesn’t feel far removed from events that still happen all over the world forty years after the story is set.
