October 16, 2025
It was 1983 in an Argentina still under a military junta. Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay man working as a window dresser, was imprisoned for doing indecent acts with a minor. In prison, he was assigned to share the cell of political prisoner Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna). To keep the mood light in their cell, Molina told the story of her favorite movie "Kiss of the Spider Woman" starring his favorite actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez) in a dual lead role.
This film written and directed by Bill Condon is an adaptation of the 1992 stage musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Terrence McNally. That musical was in turn an adaptation of a 1976 novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig. The novel had already been adapted into a 1985 dramatic film by Hector Babenco, one of the first LGBTQ-themed films nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor at the Oscars. William Hurt won as Best Actor.
The two films told basically the same story of the book, with a different spin on the ending. The main difference between the two films was the nature of the movie that Molina was telling Valentin in prison. In the original movie, it was a wartime love story starring Leni Lamaison (Braga) as the femme fatale girlfriend of a German Nazi officer. Braga also portrayed the titular Spider Woman in a second unrelated story Molina told Valentin on his final night.
In the new musical version film, the brightly-lit, glossy, and colorful movie scenes looked very different from the actual dark, dank and drab prison scenes. Jennifer Lopez went all out to play the actress Ingrid Luna and her two bombastic characters in the movie -- the alluring magazine publisher Aurora and the legendary village-protector Spider Woman. Lopez is attracting Oscar buzz again, but this was mostly a song-and-dance performance piece, not much acting.
Another big difference was that the actors playing the cellmates were also playing roles in the Ingrid Luna movie. Tonatiuh played both Molina and Aurora's personal assistant Kendall, while Diego Luna played both Valentin and the dashing photographer Armando. These two actors show off their versatility here in scenes of extremely different nature -- engaging JLo in campy musical numbers, as well as each other in the very serious prison scenes. 7/10
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