REVIEW. KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN: Camp, Kitsch, or Something Else?

Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh in "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (2025)

In 1986, the actor William Hurt, a white, cisgender male, received the Best Actor Oscar for his role as a homosexual named Molina, arrested in Argentina for public indecency and left to share a cell with left-wing revolutionary Valentin (Raul Julia). The two form an unlikely and intimate bond over the course of their incarceration, revealing unspoken truths about life, politics, and the intricate ties that bind them together.

The film was Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on Manuel Puig's 1976 novel of the same name and directed by Argentine-Brazilian Héctor Babenco. Hurt's Best Actor win marked the first time an independent film scored a major Academy Award, opening the door for small, low-budget films to gain more widespread recognition. The movie also integrated effectively Molina's love of old Hollywood B-movies, in general, and one in particular - Kiss of the Spider Woman - into the narrative, providing the gay window dresser with a respite from reality, and becoming a kind of a metaphor for the movie's personal-political themes.

Less than five years later, Kiss of the Spider Woman was re-imagined as a Brodway musical or, more appropriately, a star vehicle for Chita Rivera, Broadway icon from such classics as West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie and Chicago. Kiss was a later-in-career project for the prolific Rivera, and probably seemed like a great idea, given the novel's imaginary lapses in Hollywood films, a Fred Ebb/John Kander (Cabaret, Chicago) score, and Rivera in the titular role. Rivera went on to win a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, solidifying her Broadway credibility and leaving open roles for other Latinas to explore.

Fast forward to now (re: thirty years later): Enter Jennifer Lopez, shameless whore for celebrity publicity, whose every thought and move - personal and professional. has been meticulously documented as part of her relentless pursuit of artistic legitimacy. Since lip-syncing in her first lead role as the murdered Tijano singer-songwriter Selena, Lopez has gone on to star in countless mediocre films, to record numerous, often forgettable albums, to create an expensive skin care brand, to headline a Super Bowl half-time show, and to be involved in more personal relationship dramas than the Kardashians. So it came as no surprise when I read that Lopez had picked the film version of the musical version of Puig's novel as her latest creative endeavor.

Don't get me wrong. Despite that snarky last paragraph, I actually like J.Lo. She's a scrapper who came from nothing, whose determination to show she belongs with Hollywood's elite seems to come from a place of sincerity and a willingness to put in the blood, sweat and tears necessary to succeed. If nothing else, she's a hard worker who never seems to let setbacks get her down. That kind of resillience deserves a modicum of respect, even if the results of her labors don't always spell excellence.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is one such hit or miss and, though Lopez is clearly the star being promoted in the film's trailers, it's actually her two co-stars that steal the show. Despite the glamorous, technicolor musical numbers that once showcased Rivera, now designed to spotlight Lopez, and that punctuate Molina's escapist fantasies from the realities of imprisonment, it's the relationship between cellmates Valentin (Diego Luna) and Molina (a mesmerizing Tonatiuh) that takes center stage and drives the movie's emotional core. In this way, the songs, though clearly intended to highlight the parallels between Molina's fate and his favorite movie, "Kiss of the Spider Woman," wind up distracting from the story, dragging it down a bit and taking away from the power of the two men's conversations.

I suspect that Kander-Ebb saw a musical version of Kiss as a variation on Cabaret, where the musical numbers were all contained in the Kit Kat Club. No lovers bursting into song mid-embrace. No dancing in the streets. A musical within a movie, Kiss provides a kind of natural venue for the songs to live. But there are no "Wilkommen's" here. No "The Money Song," the chilling anthem, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," the shockingly provocative "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes," or the poignant ballad "Maybe this Time."

The songs here are pedestrian, at best. Standard, forgettable B-musical melodies that might go down better if the inherent campiness and kitsch was amplified, or if the lyrics underscored the story's themes. No such luck. These songs are played straight, and the overlong production numbers, often with awkward, clunky choreography, slow the movie's rhythm. And, with cringe-worthy lyrics like, "She's the climax of my technicolor dreams," or "Though your breath racks your ribs and you throb with pain / There's a juice on my lips for each purple stain" - well, you get the idea. Eww.

Can anything save this mess?

Actually, yes. Though I do believe the musical sequences, despite the songs' many laughable lyrics, could have been salvaged with tighter editing and more minimalist choregraphy, the saving grace in Kiss of the Spider Woman is the interaction between Tonatiuh and Luna. Just as Hurt and Julia tapped danced around an increasingly intense homoerotic pas de deux, Tonatiuh and Luna create their own masterful tête-à-tête and coeur-de-coeur, carefully scoping out the other's likes and dislikes, political and philosophical tendencies, personal and emotional vulnerabilities.

Luna gives Valentin's crusty revolutionary a kind of unguarded longing to find a trusted confidante. His dual role, along with the musical's fictitious hero Armando, juxtapose two notions of masculine bravado, though it will be Valentin's introspective heart that finally yields a different kind of machismo. His fantasy turn as Armando gives the perfect foil for Lopez's movie heroine Aurora, and one could imagine both actors breaking hearts in an earlier cinematic age.

Ultimately, though, it is relative (to movies) newcomer Tonatiuh who embodies the movie's heart and soul in a stunning performance that I hope will be remembered come Oscar time. In his mixed review of the film, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "In a head-turning breakout performance, [Tonatiuh] can flip from proud to humiliated, self-dramatizing to selfless, often within a single line reading." I could not have encapsulated my reaction to Tonatiuh's evocative Molina better. His face, a canvas of emotions, captures the movie's complex themes. In what could have been a caricature, Tonatiuh instead shows almost perfect restraint expressing the layers of Molina's struggle, the contradictions inherent in his situation, the depths of his heart. I will not forget his face, at once contorted with frustration and confusion, then filled with love and happiness, and in the end, filled with confidence and purpose.

Like William Hurt, who originated the role, Tonatiuh depicts a member of the gay community with dignity and conviction, a human being whose life has been defined by abandonment, maternal love, and sexual disappointment. Forty years ago, Hurt's incarnation of a gay man imprisoned by more than the cell he inhabits, was revolutionary in cinema, though since then, there has been criticism of Hurt playing a gay man when he was straight.

Still, Hurt's turn as Molina stands as one of his finest performances in a career that was defined by artistic risk-taking and character diversity. Tonatiuh's interpretation of Molina is, some ways, less theatrical and more personal, making Molina's transformation even more moving. I would watch this movie again just to marvel in Tonatiuh's magnificent, touching performance.

That leaves J.Lo who does not embarass herself here. She handles the singing with a kind of directness that avoids much emotion or sentimentality, which might have been effective in the final scenes. She's not Cynthia Erivo or Lady Gaga, so don't go in with high expectations. Lopez famously began her career as a fly girl, so I did expect more with the dancing and choreography, both of which are fine, but somehow seemed stilted and awkward at times. I've read that that Lopez shot all the musical numbers in one take, which is admirable, but also makes edits tricky, if needed, and some of the musical numbers would have benefited from sharper, tighter editing.

J.Lo is - or, more accurately, her characters, are - just kind of intrusive in a story that really didn't need all that flash and musical show to tell this very quiet story of two very different men who find a common spirit in the most unusual of places. The ads for Kiss begin with an overhead narrator saying "this was the role Jennifer Lopez was born to play." That may be, as Lopez's screen presence demands that you look at her and all the preparation she's given to the part(s), but that same phrase, "the role he was born to play" is being used to tout Jeremy Allen White's upcoming turn as The Boss in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, which opens later this month. So best beware accolades that pigeon-hole you into a role or an alter ego, especially if the mantle doesn't quite fit.

Of course, this latest iteration of Kiss - from novel to movie to Broadway musical and now movie musical - begs my question from a few years ago about The Color Purple, a Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Alice Walker turned blockbuster movie by Stephen Spielberg, which then became a Broadway musical, was finally turned into a movie musical.

Huh? Can't we just consider that some novels don't make good movies, that other novels-turned-movies don't need musical numbers to enhance the story? Sometimes the songs take away from an otherwise compelling story. I mean. What's next? The musical version of The Diary of Anne Frank? Wait. I think that's already been done. It ran Off-Broadway in 2023.

I watched 1985's Kiss of the Spider Woman again this week before venturing out to see the new musical version. The two are very different films with very unique, arguably generationally-centric directorial and artistic perspectives on politics, Latin America, gender identity, and the enduring power of movies to transport us to places that provide comfort, respite, hope. In some ways, both films suggest that movies can make dreamers of us all, especially when they touch the heart.

Back in 2002, I was living in Chicago and returned home to Cleveland during the holidays to visit my mom. Figuring out what activities might be fun to do together, I suggested we go to a movie, something we'd done since I was a kid. We went to see Maid in Manhattan, a better-than-average rom-com starring Jennifer Lopez and Ralph Fiennes. My mom loved it. Actually, she loved J.Lo and, a few years later, took herself to see another J.Lo rom-com, this one co-starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon called Shall We Dance?

When I asked my mom what she liked about J.Lo, she said, "Her parents were immigrants, and she tries so hard." So true, and - whether you like her or not - J.Lo has been influential in American popular culture for three decades. Her determination to bring Kiss of the Spider Woman to the big screen serves as a kind of love letter to the Latino and gay communities. In recent promotional interviews, Lopez comment - "it tells a story of love, humanity, and resilience at a time when these groups are being demonized and marginalized" - is testament to her own belief that love and connection transcend hate.

Would I recommend Kiss of the Spider Woman?

That depends on your movie genre preferences, your tolerance for ideas and representations different from your own, your affection for old B-movie musicals, and your willingness to watch a story that may lie outside your comfort zone. As I said earlier, though director Bill Condon's movie is flawed in how it itegrates musical numbers into the narrative, I would watch this movie again just to marvel in Tonatiuh's magnificent, touching performance. The choice is yours.

But I'd risk getting caught in the web.

*******

Kiss of the Spider Woman is currently in theaters. It is not scheduled to stream until March 2026.