Kiss of the Spider Woman

- Ah, I see that Madame Web finally got that sequel it always wanted.

- No, it didn’t, Bo.

- Come again?

- Kiss of the Spider Woman, by Manuel Puig, was previously filmed in 1985 with Raul Julia & William Hurt headlining. While Puig already adapted it to the stage in 1980, Terrence McNally did so again in 1992 as a musical with songs by Chicago and Cabaret’s Fred Ebb & John Kander. Thanks to Bill Condon, who adapted Chicago for Rob Marshall in 2002, the Spider Woman musical is now a movie. With me so far?

- Yeah, just tell me all about it.

- It’s 1983, Argentina, during the final months of the junta. Here, we find two mismatched cellmates: Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), a revolutionary, and Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a trans-coded window dresser. To pass the time, Molina tells Valentin about his favorite movie musical. It stars his favorite matinee idol, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez) as Aurora, a woman caught between two men - her gay-coded assistant Kendall Nesbitt and the more conventional Armando - and the ghostly Spider Woman (also Lopez). For the retelling, Molina casts himself and Valentin as the leading men.

Meanwhile, back in reality, it turns out Molina is actually a mole for the Warden (Bruno Bichir). Molina is supposed to get Valentin to spill his secrets. Molina, instead, falls for Valentin, and Valentin gradually reciprocates. How will this melodrama end?

- Badly? But please go on.

- The musical numbers come in through Molina’s fantasies, both from the in-universe movie and his own musings. Yes, it’s sort of a combination of how Chicago and Cabaret handled their numbers for their films. The mood whiplash can sometimes be extreme. One of the peppiest numbers, the Fosse-inspired Where You Are, follows one of the story’s darkest moments. Meanwhile, the title song perfectly juxtaposes a pivotal moment between our leads; it’s also Lopez’s standout scene. And then, there’s the finale, which makes for a memorably surreal dying dream. Did I say too much?

- Yeah.

- William Hurt won an Oscar for his take on Molina, and hopefully, Tonatiuh won’t be far behind. He’s delightfully giddy when he goes on about the movie, and quite sympathetic when reality cruelly sinks in. We fully empathize with the circumstances that drove him to be the Warden’s mole. By the end, I felt kind of ill as I recognized that the novel’s downer ending was imminent. But at least the aforementioned finale gives Molina one last moment of happiness.

As Valentin, Luna plays the jaded stoic pretty well. He and Tonatiuh share some excellent chemistry, particularly when Molina’s influence finally enlivens Valentin. Nothing, not even a cleaning crew, will make you take your eyes off him during the final shot. Lopez, meanwhile, does all right as Aurora & Ingrid, but she’s perfectly menacing as the Spider Woman. Her guises give her a lush wardrobe designed by Colleen Atwood & Christine L. Cantella, which perfectly compliments Scott Chambliss’s extravagant production design. And finally, we have Bichir, whose Warden tempers his menace with professionalism.

The film also has an exquisite makeup and hairstyling team. In prison, our leads and their fellow prisoners have seen better days. In Molina’s fantasies, he and Valentin are all dressed up and ready to go. The contrast between our leads’ real and fantasy selves is so extreme that they look like different people. You’ll be amazed once you see the difference. The fantasy world, as filtered by Tobias Schlissler, is pretty gaudy, but you might get used to its old-time aesthetics. Finally, we have a pretty good adapation of the stage score by Sam Davis, particularly the title song.

- Wrap it up, Jethro.

- Kiss of the Spider Woman isn’t looking that hot at the box-office right now. But I hope enough people see it and take notice of what is certainly Tonatiuh’s star-making role. Its more established cast are good, but his spotlight shines the brightest here. You won’t want to look away once you get into this movie’s web. See it soon before it gets crowded out by everything else this weekend. That’s it for now.