There was a time when a Broadway musical adaptation with Bill Condon’s name on it was an all-caps HUGE thing, but Kiss of the Spider Woman (now streaming on Hulu, in addition to VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) ain’t that. Don’t confuse the film as a remake of the 1985 non-musical film (for which William Hurt won an Oscar) – it instead adapts the smash 1992 stage production that won a pile of Tonys, and all of these adaptations stem from Manuel Puig’s 1976 postmodern novel. But the newest Kiss is the first time this property hasn’t raked in acclaim, despite boasting an extravagant song-and-dance performance from Jennifer Lopez, who may have an outside shot at an Oscar nomination; it debuted as an ill-fitting Sundance Film Festival entry, then got a fall theatrical run that earned an embarrassing $2 million, a far, far cry from the success Condon enjoyed for helming Dreamgirls and the 2017 Beauty and the Beast remake, and for writing Chicago and The Greatest Showman. Now let’s determine if the film deserves all this indifference.
The Gist: Argentina, 1983. The military junta is in power, resulting in the deaths of 30,000 citizens. It probably should be 30,001, but Valentin (Diego Luna) knows key things about the resistance. If he talks, he might save his life. If he doesn’t talk, he’ll suffer through torture, but will definitely save his life. He’s no good to the fascists if he’s dead, see. He studies every waking moment, and has led a hunger strike in the prison. He’s weary and filthy and droopy when Luis (Tonatiuh) is shoved into the cell to be his bunkmate. Temperamentally, Luis is Valentin’s opposite – weirdly perky considering he’s been jailed for “public indecency,” which is what dictatorships say instead of “you’re going to prison because we hate gay people.”
This odd couple eventually warms up to each other. Might as well, when you’re in one of the most miserable prisons on the planet. And Luis has an ulterior motive – the warden (Bruno Bichir) is leaning on him to rat on Valentin, dangling parole in front of his face. Complicating matters, Luis’ mother is in ill health. But he’s reluctant to be a spy. He calls himself apolitical, but knows the regime is evil, and the more time he spends with Valentin, the more sympathetic he becomes. Valentin gets taken away and beaten, and Luis nurses him back to health. Valentin gets poisoned, and Luis cleans him up when he shits himself (!).
To pass the time, Luis acts out his favorite movie, a Technicolor musical called Kiss of the Spider Woman, recasting himself and Valentin as characters. We jump from the gray-on-gray cell to a far more vibrant color palette occupied by Hollywood superstar Ingrid Luna (Lopez), and as Luis narrates about her luminescent beauty, Valentin pleads, “Please, no erotic descriptions.” Ingrid plays a high-class magazine editor named Aurora, who falls for a photographer, Armando, a cleaned-up and happy Valentin. Luis casts himself as Aurora’s closeted gay personal assistant. As Aurora and Armando start feeling things for each other, he’s tempted by a former lover (Aline Mayagoitia), and intimidated by a brutal gangster (Tony Dovolani). They venture to Aurora’s home village and encounter the Spider Woman, also played by Ingrid Luna/Lopez, who demands sacrifice, and Armando is it. High drama – and lots of belting-it-out and fine choreography by Ingrid Luna. Some of what occurs in Luis’ telling metaphorically mirrors what’s happening back in reality. It’s only a temporary escape, this movie-within-the-movie; reality always and inevitably intrudes, doesn’t it?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’m Still Here is more my speed for stories about the effects of junta oppression on interpersonal drama.
Performance Worth Watching: Lopez is the frosting – no shocker, she’s gifted at anchoring big, exaggerated song-and-dance numbers – and Tonatiuh is the cake, providing the emotional grounding the film requires.
Memorable Dialogue: Luis wants to know how Valentin manages to endure brutal interrogation:
Luis: Are you highly principled or just plain stubborn?
Valentin: Maybe just highly stubborn.
Sex and Skin: Implied nookie.
Our Take: Temporarily escaping hardship through the storytelling powers of cinema? I can relate to that, intensely – but it doesn’t mean this new Kiss of the Spider Woman is a particularly successful or invigorating film. It’s competently conceived and directed, with Condon styling the Lopez-centric musical sequences after 1950s Hollywood, and the prison sequences are convincingly grubby; both come off stagey though, artificial and heightened, in spite of Lopez’s spirited jazz-hands vibrancy and Tonatiuh’s presence, which gradually provides the film’s dramatic thrust, and the fulcrum of its tension.
The drastic tonal contrast results in the musical stuff undermining and trivializing the more serious stuff, sapping the film of some of its emotional impact, and Condon and Lopez never quite elevate the blah songs into anything more than a distraction. They’re supposed to provide a soothing, but meaningful escape for Luis and Valentin, but it’s often akin to dropping dopey-plot Madonna videos smack in the middle of a grueling, life-or-death prison saga, dramaticus interruptus at its most distracting.
The growing bond between Luis and Valentin is Spider Woman’s most vital component, but it takes half the film before Tonatiuh and Luna fully, truly connect – rather boldly and ironically, during the otherwise gruesome ass-wiping scene. That sets up an emotionally impactful ending tempered by its hasty execution, a little too little too late, and definitely not quite enough. It’ll be good enough for some, especially Broadway devotees, but the rest of us won’t be meaningfully tangled in its web.
Our Call: This Kiss isn’t at all the disaster its theatrical-flop status implies. But it is uneven and at-best middling, so I can’t in good conscience say anything but SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.