{"id":210203,"date":"2025-10-08T22:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/210203\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T22:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T22:59:10","slug":"kiss-of-the-spider-woman-review-jennifer-lopez-diego-luna-lead-bill-condons-lush-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/210203\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Kiss of the Spider Woman\u2019 review: Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna lead Bill Condon\u2019s lush adaptation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The part of Luis Molina, the gay prisoner with a penchant for Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age at the heart of \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman,\u201d<\/a> has been good to actors over the years. It\u2019s what got William Hurt<\/a> his first best actor Oscar, for H\u00e9ctor Babenco\u2019s 1985 film adaptation. Several years later, Brent Carver would win a Tony for John Kander<\/a> and Fred Ebb\u2019s Broadway musical.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise, then, that the standout in Bill Condon\u2019s \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman\u201d (in theaters Friday) is the person playing Molina. Still, it takes a special kind of actor to make such an immediate impact as Tonatiuh, a relative newcomer, does in this film. They don\u2019t even need all the window dressing of the fantasy movie musical sequences to make their scenes come alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cKiss of the Spider Woman,\u201d has had many lives, first as a novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig, published in 1976 and widely banned. It imagines the meeting of two cellmates in an Argentine prison, Molina a romantic dreamer, and Valent\u00edn ( Diego Luna<\/a> ), a Marxist revolutionary. They develop an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot to his favorite movie: A fictional musical called \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman\u201d starring the fictional screen siren Ingrid Luna (played by Jennifer Lopez<\/a> ).<\/p>\n

The latest is an adaptation of the Broadway musical<\/a>, with Condon and late playwright Terrence McNally<\/a> co-credited for the script. Set in Argentina in 1983, amid the military dictatorship\u2019s war on its political opponents, the film alternates between the dreary reality of the prison cell and the lavish MGM-styled musical world in Molina\u2019s imagination. Valent\u00edn resists hearing about it at first \u2014 too busy being serious and reading Lenin. \u201cWell, that sounds fun,\u201d Molina deadpans, before throwing out his own quote, \u201cThe struggle is not over until all men are free.\u201d No, it\u2019s not Lenin, it\u2019s Cyd Charisse in \u201cSilk Stockings.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

But Molina is a persuasive sort and a transfixing storyteller and soon Valent\u00edn is wrapped up in this fantasy world too. Movies are dreams, Molina says, admitting that nobody claims that \u201cKiss of the Spider Woman\u201d is the greatest movie ever made. In a funny aside that could be a self-conscious defense of the movie we\u2019re watching, he says it\u2019s \u201ctoo ambitious for its own good, too many flavors in the stew.\u201d And yet, he adds, \u201cthere\u2019s so much beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world of the movie within the movie is candy colored splendor, a stark contrast to the dour environs of the prison. With Kander and Ebb\u2019s songs, Collen Atwood\u2019s lush costumes, Scott Chambliss\u2019 sets, and Sergio Trujillo\u2019s classic choreography, Lopez has an enviable canvas to work with. And she seems to relish the heightened, glamorous spectacle of it all, singing and dancing and doing the MGM thing with all the diva gusto she can muster.<\/p>\n

Molina imagines himself in the role of her devoted assistant, and Valent\u00edn as her love interest. And while it\u2019s fun to see Tonatiuh and Luna all cleaned up and dashing in this fantasy world, you\u2019re never exactly invested in the movie within the movie, beside basking in the visual spectacle. In that way, it is an escape from the misery of the cell. But for an audience member, the cell is where all the interesting drama and growth is happening.<\/p>\n

Valent\u00edn and Molina are obvious opposites. Valent\u00edn is consumed with entrenched ideas of what it means to be a man, and that meaning is only derived through struggle. Molina\u2019s head might be in the clouds but within those fantasies are wisdom and shrewd survival instincts too. He\u2019s not been bunked up with Valent\u00edn accidentally: He\u2019s an informant. Naturally, this transactional situation turns into love and, of course, tragedy.<\/p>\n

Condon (\u201cGods and Monsters,\u201d \u201cDreamgirls,\u201d \u201cBeauty and the Beast\u201d<\/a> ) is a journeyman filmmaker with an obvious passion for the material at hand. Oscar-nominated for writing the screenplay for \u201cChicago\u201d (which he didn\u2019t direct, Rob Marshall did), Condon directs his musical sequences more simply \u2014 allowing the dancing to shine. And it is fun to watch, a bit of frivolity and escapism.<\/p>\n

But you\u2019re always eager to get back to the cell for more Tonatiuh. Molina\u2019s main stage might be a dull, claustrophobic prison cell, but Tonatiuh\u2019s performance is vibrant technicolor.<\/p>\n

\u201cKiss of the Spider Woman,\u201d a Roadside Attractions release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for \u201clanguage, some violence, sexual content.\u201d Running time: 128 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The part of Luis Molina, the gay prisoner with a penchant for Hollywood\u2019s Golden Age at the heart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[15665,2224,72304,120157,14271,57176,88,26806,120159,120153,120150,19638,120152,3140,26808,120156,120158,10815,206,69526,120151,120154,120155,18598,120160,120149],"class_list":["post-210203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-argentina","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-bill-condon","tag-brent-carver","tag-central-america","tag-diego-luna","tag-entertainment","tag-film-reviews","tag-fred-ebb","tag-hctor-babenco","tag-ingrid-luna","tag-jennifer-lopez","tag-john-kander","tag-latin-america","tag-lindsey-bahr","tag-luis-molina","tag-manuel-puig","tag-media","tag-movies","tag-musicals","tag-rob-marshall","tag-scott-chambliss","tag-sergio-trujillo","tag-south-america","tag-terrence-mcnally","tag-william-hurt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}