KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
(director/writer: Bill Condon; screenwriter: based on the stage musical with book by Terrence McNally; cinematographer: Tobias A. Schliessler; editor: Brian A. Kates; music: John Kander; cast: Diego Luna (Valentin Arregui), Tonatiuh (Luis Molina), Jennifer Lopez (Aurora/The Spider Woman), Bruno Bichir (Warden), Josefina Scaglione (Marta), Aline Mayagoitia (Paolina), Tony Dovolani (Johnny); Runtime: 128; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Greg Yolen, Tom Kirdahy, Barry Josephson; Mohari Media/Artists Equity; 2025-in English, Spanish)
“It’s a risk-free messy political film that I liked best for JLo’s lively star performance.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Veteran filmmaker Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls”/”Gods and Monsters”) is director and writer of the 1993 Tony-winning Broadway musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb. It’s based on the 1976 novel Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. The film is a make-over of Hector Babenco’s Oscar-winning 1985 film, where William Hurt won an Oscar for Best Actor.
The uneven film is a prison-set fantasy that suffers from being stilted, overlong, and for sanitizing its grim setting too much. The Argentinian prison drama is lushly filmed in color and fills the screen with many splashy song-and-dance numbers, done in the style of the Golden Age Hollywood musicals of the 1950s.
Its theme is to survive or escape from the oppressive 1983 right-wing military dictatorship. The imprisoned leftist revolutionary Valentin (Diego Luna) clashes over politics with his chatty gay window dresser cellmate Luis (Tonatiuh), serving an 8-year sentence for corrupting a minor. The queer Luis finds freedom by escaping reality to live in his mind-bending fantasy world.
Luis obsesses over the fictional movie star Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). He tells his cellmate of the film where she plays spider woman.
The musical set-pieces are showy, colorfully costumed, and take place in Luis’s head. The songs were created by Kander and Ebb, the duo who did the lyrics for Cabaret and Chicago. Lopez is up to the task of playing with pizzazz the Latina musical star who kills her prey with a kiss.
While Lopez is well-suited for her zesty star role and Luna gracefully veers from his prisoner role to the musical, Tonatiuh is out of step in the musical numbers even if at home in his dramatic cellmate role.
It’s a risk-free messy political film that I liked best for JLo’s lively star performance.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 1/29/2025 GRADE: B-
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