“Optimistic endings / Passionate romances / Beautifully beefy heroes taking death-defying chances / Only in the movies,” Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) sings in the finale of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” But viewers left the theater wishing its ending had lived up to this grandiose picture.
Released on Oct. 10, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the latest movie from director Bill Condon, known for “Dreamgirls” and “Beauty and the Beast.” Based on the eponymous 1976 book by Manuel Puig, which inspired a 1993 Broadway musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” follows a pair of prisoners, Molina and Valentín Arregui (Diego Luna), in 1980s Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The movie begins when Molina is reassigned to the cell of Valentín, a political prisoner jailed by the oppressive military junta that ruled Argentina at the time. To pass the time, Molina, a flamboyantly gay window dresser, decides to tell Valentín the story of an in-universe golden-age Hollywood movie — which Molina calls the “Kiss of the Spider Woman” — and its glamorous star Aurora, played by fictional actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). The movie within the movie is presented as a nesting doll with vividly colored segments shot in a different aspect ratio.
This apparent complexity is the movie's biggest flaw, as Condon struggles to bridge the gap between stage and screen. The scenes in Valentín’s jail cell seem staged, and Tonatiuh’s performance feels too Broadway-esque at times.
While this element is weak at times, the movie within the movie also serves as one of the film’s high points. The in-universe “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a technicolor dreamscape of campy fun in which Lopez shows off her superb dancing talent. Both Tonatiuh and Diego Luna play double roles within Molina’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which follows Aurora as she attempts to break a curse placed on her and her lover. It is not entirely clear if Molina's recounting of the film is entirely truthful, as events in the prison parallel events in his story.
The discordance between the outer and inner movies is exacerbated by Condon’s choice to cut the Broadway version’s musical numbers from the prison scenes. The decision was likely made in hopes of drawing a sharp contrast between the wonderful world of the screen with the prison’s stark reality, and to this extent, it succeeds. But without music, the prison scenes are somewhat drawn out and boring compared to the rest of the film’s glitz and glamour.
Condon does succeed, however, in drawing attention to a piece of Argentine history unknown to many Americans. Between 1976 and 1983, the American-backed regime ruling Argentina murdered or forcibly disappeared over 30,000 people, and tens of thousands more were imprisoned and tortured during the Dirty War. Condon excels in depicting the suffocating atmosphere of political repression present in Argentina at the time. But the lack of emotional depth in the prison scenes makes it hard for viewers to grasp the true severity of the political situation.
The only things buoying “Kiss of the Spider Woman” to mediocrity are the parts of the book and musical that Condon adapted faithfully. Both were critically lauded for their complex portrayal of queer life and political repression, and the vestiges of those works are evident in the movie. But even with those remnants as a base, the tedious prison scenes and subpar performances leave viewers wanting more.
“Only in the movies,” as Molina would sing, can such unrealized potential fall flat.
