Kiss of the Spider Woman has a distinguished history. It began life in 1976 as a novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig. In 1985, it was made into a film, directed by Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco, and starring William Hurt, Raul Julia and Sonia Braga. In 1992, a musical version opened in Toronto, written by Terence McNally, and then it came to Broadway a year later. Now, the musical version has been filmed, directed by Bill Condon, with Diego Luna, Tonatiuh and Jennifer Lopez. And it still has plenty of juice.
It’s a prison story, set in the Argentine dictatorship in 1983. Valentin (Luna) is a studious political revolutionary, when suddenly he gets a cellmate, Molina (Tonatiuh) clapped in prison for being gay. They have nothing in common. Valentin is serious, and committed to his cause, with no room for frivolity, while Molina fancies up his side of the cell, gets foods from his mother and prattles on about movies – especially musicals. He exasperates Valentin, who challenges him, but Molina talks back.
"Why make yourself trivial?" Valentin asks.
"Because I am trivial, only I know it," Molina replies.
And this is the beginning of what becomes a profound friendship, based on love, respect and understanding, as these two polar opposites learn to accommodate each other’s humanity.
The road to friendship is difficult. Molina is supposed to inform the warden about Valentin’s political allies. The guards try to poison Valentin, and he’s tortured. Prison, the government and his own life are so harsh that Molina escapes into the fantasy of a musical film he calls Kiss of the Spider Woman. Molina’s fantasy runs in various scenes throughout the film – in gaudy, over-bright color in a sterile but open world, of course very different from the dark, dank confining cell.
The film’s a love story, with many complications. The three main actors play multiple parts, in both the prison cell and in the movie fantasy, so that the fantasy isn’t isolated; even if it’s elusive, it’s also fully part of the lives Molina and Valentin live in prison.
Obviously this story has legs, as they say in the entertainment world. It mattered when Puig wrote the novel, which at the time was his response to the tyranny in Argentina, but – duh – tyranny has not vanished from our world. It’s alive and well, and this story seems current every time it appears. Last I looked governments were still putting people they don’t like into prisons – or worse.
Like all prison stories, Kiss of the Spider Woman is about freedom. At first, Molina’s escape into his musical looks silly to us and intolerable to Valentin, who sits on his bed reading Lenin and thinking angry thoughts about overcoming oppression. It’s a tricky balance for Kiss of the Spider Woman because to reject Valentin’s ideas in favor of a breezy musical would betray him, as well as oppressed people all over the world. And to let Molina get away with just his cheesy vision would abandon him to the triviality Valentin charged him with in the beginning. It could also be a threat to the serious picture of murderous tyranny to put those exaggerated musical numbers into the film in the first place. So the musical numbers must grow slowly but progressively serious, as they’re integrated into the prison lives of the two characters. The resolution isn’t easy, but neither is the struggle of people to find freedom, whether they’re in prison or not.
