Movie Review: Kiss of the Spider Woman

It’s always a shame when a movie can have so much going for it but still not add up to a satisfying whole. Such is the case with Bill Condon’s adaptation of the hit musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, itself adapted from Manuel Puig’s novel of the same name. There is certainly a lot to like here, nothing comes across as egregiously bad, and some moments are genuinely moving, but in the end I felt surprisingly “meh” about the experience.

Argentina’s military dictatorship is bordering on collapse in the early 1980s and its leaders are desperate to cling to power, leading them to new levels of cruelty in their treatment of political prisoners during their attempts to extricate information from them. Valentin Arregui Paz (Diego Luna) is one such captive, who the government believes has valuable intel about the revolutionary group he is believed to belong to. Their torture methods have thus far yielded nothing and so they try a different tactic, moving Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a man arrested for his homosexuality, into his cell in hopes that he might be able to somehow learn something. Given that Valentin has never displayed any gay tendencies it is unclear as to why they think this could work. Given his somewhat chilly response to Luis’ very talkative presence, it doesn’t seem like it will, but once his new cellmate begins to describe the plot of a cheesy Hollywood musical titled The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Valentin begins to get drawn in by the diversion and gradually begins to open up.

Fortunately, the entire film does not stay confined to the small cell the pair must occupy, instead showing us the scenes of the other movie as Luis describes it (with questionable accuracy), and introducing us to his idol, fictional cinema star Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez) as lead character Aurora, a magazine publisher who is visiting her home village for a fashion shoot with her faithful assistant Kendall (Tonatiuh again) and photographer Armando (Luna again), with whom she has begun to find herself smitten. Aurora is the happiest she’s ever been with Armando, but a local gangster, Armando’s ex-lover, and a mythical being known as the Spider Woman (Lopez as Ingrid again) all conspire to keep the pair apart.

Lopez exudes pure star power in her scenes, singing, dancing, and vamping her way across colorful sets that stand in stark contrast to the grays and browns of the prison scenes. Unfortunately, the songs themselves are not great. Only two stand out as decent and even they don’t linger in the viewer’s mind after they’ve concluded. The movie within the movie is actually pretty ludicrous and predictable as well. That appears to have been intentional so it’s forgivable, but it still makes it hard to become invested in.

The prison scenes are more compelling, as Luna and Tonatiuh both bring their characters and their budding relationship to life. While their time together may be brief, their growing fondness for each other is utterly believable and ultimately swoon worthy. It is only marred by the movie’s rather abrupt ending, which feels both inevitable and unnecessary, possibly as a metaphor for the way such things play out in reality.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is never boring and features three stars (two established and one up-and-coming) giving powerhouse performances that alone justify the price of admission. The themes about the way people suffer under authoritarian rule feel particularly timely but the others about how art of any kind can help us to escape said suffering, even if only for a moment, feel sadly ironic coming from a film that doesn’t shy away from the depths of human cruelty. It may be that the story tries to bite off more than it can chew, but the end result is a little too muddled to be truly memorable. ★★★