‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ Review: A Musical Fantasy Inside a Prison Cell

The long chain of adaptations of Kiss of the Spider Woman—which began as a 1976 novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig—is a revealing case study of how the entertainment industry works. Puig himself turned the novel into a stage play in 1983, but the most widely known version remains Héctor Babenco’s 1985 film, starring William Hurt and Raúl Juliá. That was not the end of the road. In 1993, composer-lyricist duo Kander & Ebb (the creators of Cabaret and Chicago), along with playwright Terrence McNally, transformed the story into a Broadway musical that toured internationally and won several major awards. It is that musical incarnation that has now been adapted for the screen.

What makes this new version “odd” has less to do with the differences between each adaptation—or even with their departures from Puig’s original novel, which are numerous but mostly tied to narrative choices and period details—than with the fact that Kiss of the Spider Woman has always been, if not a musical, at least a story deeply infused with fantasy and with the idea of “cinema within cinema.” At its core, it is a prison story about the encounter between a political prisoner and a gay inmate, shaped from the start by a parallel narrative: one man entertaining the other by recounting the plots of classic films. In this version, that element is what changes most. Those films are now musicals. The prison, meanwhile, remains very much a prison.

Mexican actor Diego Luna plays Valentín Arregui, a political activist imprisoned in Argentina in 1983—an unusual moment in which to set the story, as the dictatorship was already collapsing in the wake of the Falklands/Malvinas defeat. Director Bill Condon (Chicago) includes explanatory texts referencing the 30,000 disappeared, but the specific political context remains somewhat vague and generalized. That is ultimately beside the point, since realism is not the film’s main concern. Valentín is soon assigned a new cellmate: Luis Molina (played by Mexican-American actor Tonatiuh), a young gay man jailed for “public indecency.” From the outset, the two could not seem more different.

Valentín is serious, disciplined, politically committed—a reader of theory, grounded and pragmatic. Luis is his opposite: a flamboyant dreamer obsessed with movie divas, fashion, romance, and a world built on fantasy and illusion. They do not connect at all. That begins to change when Luis, desperate to escape the monotony of prison life, starts recounting the plots of old films to Valentín—most notably a kitschy musical called Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring a (fictional) Hollywood diva named Ingrid Luna, played here by Jennifer Lopez. In the musical-within-the-film, Luna plays Aurora, a magazine editor entangled in a turbulent love affair with a photographer named Armando (also played by Luna), while navigating a tense political climate. As he tells the story, Luis casts himself as Kendall, Aurora’s gay assistant, a character who plays a key role in that narrative.

Condon’s film oscillates between these two worlds, deepening the relationship inside the prison through the characters’ secrets and emotional tensions, while those same conflicts are mirrored—metaphorically—in the musical unfolding in parallel. Shot in vivid Technicolor and staged on deliberately artificial sets evoking 1940s Hollywood, the trio of performers use the songs to comment on what they are experiencing in the “real” world. At the center is the growing emotional bond between two men who cannot fully acknowledge what they feel for each other. Political tensions escalate in both realms, as do the secrets they keep.

This is not a film where it makes much sense to nitpick inconsistencies tied to realism—yes, Argentina is portrayed as English-speaking, albeit with occasional local accents drifting in from the background, and the dictatorship is presented in broad, generic strokes. The film’s strengths and weaknesses lie elsewhere. Interestingly, this is not one of Diego Luna’s strongest performances. Usually a reliable presence, he seems slightly uncomfortable or miscast here. While the role aligns with characters he has played before—his Cassian Andor is also a political militant imprisoned by a dictatorship—musical numbers are not where his strengths lie.

As expected, Lopez is the one who truly shines in that department. In lavish retro sequences, she fully embraces her musical persona, singing and dancing in costumes that feel closer to a live stage show than to psychological realism. Her character may be deliberately superficial, but within those limits Lopez is convincing, essentially delivering a live performance in a fictional context. The real revelation, however, is Tonatiuh (Elizarraraz), a young actor who seems tailor-made for the role. Whether in the prison scenes or in the film-within-the-film, he moves with ease through a complex character, providing the emotional core the movie needs to move forward.

Beyond that, the plot follows well-worn paths that by now feel somewhat conventional. The relationship between Valentín and Luis, and their mutual “education”—one discovering sexual freedom, the other embracing a more ethical, if not strictly political, commitment—feels dated and rooted in stereotypes that have largely fallen out of favor. What does stand out, and clearly reflects the Dreamgirls director’s experience with the genre, is the way the musical numbers are filmed. Condon favors longer takes and fewer cuts, closer to the classical approach to staging musical sequences, allowing the performers’ physical and vocal work to register more clearly than the hyperactive editing typical of many contemporary productions. In that respect, the film brings to a familiar story something not exactly new, but solid, generous, and unmistakably cinematic.