There’s a grim irony that marketing might’ve played a role in the muted reception that met “Kiss of the Spider Woman” upon its premiere recently at the Sundance Film Festival, not the result of any concerted effort on the part of the filmmakers, but the expectations that naturally accompany a musical starring Jennifer Lopez from Bill Condon, the director of “Dreamgirls.” The power of a film’s promise is central to the drama as its lead Molina (Tonatiuh) puts up movie posters from the 1950s and ’60s in his jail cell, all pictures featuring their favorite star Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). The posters aren’t only a portal for his own escape as he can imagine losing himself in the storylines of the movies when the dreary alternative could kill him, but for his cellmate Valentin (Diego Luna) as well when he starts to describe the plots out loud.
Now in its fifth major iteration having leapt from stage to screen both as a play and a musical based on Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” still has the sturdy foundation of Molina and Valentin’s relationship, providing the same juicy roles to Tonatiuh and Luna that once landed Oscar nominations for Raul Julia and William Hurt as a pair with conflicting attitudes towards surrendering to fantasy given the reality around them, but to expect something of a larger scale with the grand musical numbers that exist in Molina’s head could lead to disappointment when the story’s strengths continue to lie in its intimacy.
Condon is no stranger to tricky musical adaptations, having cracked the code for the entire modern musical era we’re in now when separating the stage action from the main narrative in his script for “Chicago,” and although his latest involves a similar effect, his sense of invention continues to impress when the set-up for “Kiss of the Spider Woman” slyly speaks directly to skeptics for the form. When Valentin (Diego Luna) would rather be reading up on Lenin — like so many others confined in the Argentinian prison where he and Molina have been sent, his crime is only a resistance to the military dictatorship in the country circa 1983 — Molina is obliged to put on a show with only the tantalizing adjectives at his disposal to sweep him up in the same excitement he felt watching the Ingrid Luna films for the first time, stirring up a repartee that takes on a certain musicality as the pinstriped duo debates the merits of escapism before Lopez can even strut into the picture, though once she does in gleaming Technicolor armed with music and lyrics from Kander and Ebb, it becomes hopeless for Valentin to do anything but give in.
On the whole, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is similarly irresistible, but Molina and Valentin aren’t the only ones to struggle at times to escape their confines. While it’s a clearly a blessing to have Lopez around to lift the mood — she acquits herself quite well in a role originated by Chita Rivera — the character of Ingrid Luna is limited by design, a figment of Molina’s imagination that is so captivating a presence in musical numbers that it’s a downer when there isn’t more there outside of them. Condon also makes an understandable but unfortunate choice to quickly dispense with the story’s historical context with a title card about the dictatorship that may be to the ultimate benefit of the film when it never gets mired in arcane detail about why Molina and Valentin are unjustly behind bars, yet can only operate in broad strokes from then on. A parallel between the oppression that Molina feels as a gay man who wishes to transition and Valentin holding onto secrets he can’t share for political reasons makes create a shared path to liberation, and the latter can be handled more explicitly today than it was in Hector Babenco’s 1985 film, but still can feel if it’s only scratching the surface.
Still, the film is propelled by passion and features a starmaking turn for Tonatiuh, who is charged with not only winning over the pessimistic Valentin, but a tough crowd elsewhere when Molina could easily become a flamboyant caricature and instead becomes a beating heart, supported with considerable soul by Luna, who has always captivated with a look that he knows something that no one else in the room does not, but what was once boyish bluffing now has now been replaced by hard-won wisdom. For all the razzle dazzle of the musical numbers, Molina and Valentin’s scenes together manage to be the main attraction when crackling with the same energy and while “Kiss of the Spider Woman” demonstrates the power of escapism, it’s always made more interesting by what’s going on inside.
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” does not yet have U.S. distribution.