Kiss of the Spider Woman Review: Dazzling and Disappointing
Bill Condon’s glossy Kiss of the Spider Woman favors J.Lo’s showmanship over the musical’s political grit.
One of modern cinema’s foremost champions of stage-to-screen musicals, Bill Condon has enjoyed enviable success as the writer-director of Dreamgirls, director of Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, and screenwriter of Rob Marshall’s blockbuster hit Chicago.
Condon also co-wrote The Greatest Showman, a splashy musical conceived for the screen, now being brought to the stage by Disney. So it’s safe to say that, along with the films of Nine and Into the Woods helmer Marshall, Condon’s work has largely defined the look and sound of today’s movie musicals.
And yet, the filmmaker’s most powerful film remains not a musical but the gripping 1997 queer drama Gods and Monsters, which earned Condon an Academy Award for his adapted screenplay.
That film’s taut psychological suspense surrounding the slow-burning seduction of a straight gardener by his desperately lonely gay film director employer bears similarities to the central relationship in Condon’s latest stage-to-screen musical adaptation, Kiss of the Spider Woman.
So the filmmaker might have found a way to fuse the best of both worlds, combining sexually-charged drama with glitzy song-and-dance spectacle. But instead, this Kiss of the Spider Woman, while vibrantly entertaining, seems to put its focus too heavily on musical razzle-dazzle, coming up short in its portrayal of the emotionally fraught romance at its heart.
Based on the Tony-winning stage musical with book by Terrence McNally and a score by the legendary team of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb — which itself was based on the novel by Manuel Puig — the film stars newcomer Tonatiuh (Hulu’s short-lived Latino soap Promised Land) and Andor‘s Diego Luna as Molina and Valentín, cellmates inside an Argentinian prison during the oppressive military regime.
Rigid freedom fighter Valentín initially disdains effeminate gay window dresser Molina, a convicted sex offender serving an eight-year sentence for public indecency with a minor inside a public restroom. But Molina wins him over by spinning vivid stories of his favorite Golden Age movies and his favorite movie star, Ingrid Luna or La Luna (Jennifer Lopez).
Molina’s tales of La Luna’s onscreen exploits, especially in her role as Aurora in romantic thriller Kiss of the Spider Woman, fill the prison pair’s endless hours spent locked in their cell. They grow closer, as splashy Technicolor scenes from her movie musicals offer them escape into a glamorous world of plenty, where La Luna is wooed and pursued by dapper gents in tuxes.
As embodied by La Lopez, movie goddess La Luna absolutely captivates kicking up her heels in the gorgeous costumes by Colleen Atwood and Christine Cantella. Performing choreography by Tony winner Sergio Trujillo, the former Fly Girl kills in the gold-toned mambo extravaganza “Her Name Is Aurora,” and charms in the saucily comedic “Where You Are.”
Her singing, however, while pop-singer pleasant, doesn’t evince the depth of character audiences might crave — or that was delivered by the Tony-winning original Chita Rivera, and her Broadway replacement Vanessa Williams (whose performance I saw). Lopez and Tonatiuh duet beautifully together when Molina fantasizes himself in the role of La Luna’s leading man, but their romantic chemistry is null and void.
The chemistry between Molina and Valentín is more compelling, with Tonatiuh and Luna capturing the dignity of these two downtrodden men in a painfully destitute situation. The less said about Luna’s flimsy singing voice, the better, but he infuses principled resister Valentín with passion and purpose.
Unfortunately, the film misses in conveying the web of conflicting desires behind Valentín’s seduction. The fact that he’s the prey being captured by Molina, an informant for the prison warden, should provide the story its sharpest punch — but somehow the dramatic impact doesn’t land. The film is perhaps too swept up in its gleaming musical reveries to notice.
Kiss of the Spider Woman (★★★☆☆) is rated R and playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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