Producers: Barry Josephson, Tom Kirdahy and Greg Yolen Director: Bill Condon Screenplay: Bill Condon Cast: Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Jennifer Lopez, Bruno Bichir, Josefina Scaglione, Aline Mayagoitia, Tony Dovolani, Eduardo Ramos and David Turner Distributor: Roadside Attractions
Grade: C
The permutations that Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel has undergone over the years include a stage adaptation by Puig (1983), Hector Babenco’s award-winning 1985 film, and a 1993 Broadway musical with a book by Terrence McNally, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. Bill Condon’s film transfers the last to the screen—though with considerable changes of its own.
The basics of the plot remain the same. Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser, and Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), a Marxist activist, are cellmates in an Argentinian prison in 1983, the former on a morals charge and the later for his political radicalism. Molina gradually wins the initially hostile Valentin over with kindness and descriptions of a film he loves—in this case a frothy musical starring Molina’s idol, the beautiful actress Ingrid Luna as the irresistible Aurora, whose love for photographer Armando irritates her besotted friend Kendall Nesbitt. It also rouses the anger of gangster Johnny Desiderio (Tony Dovolani), who lusts after Aurora, as well as the ire of her jealous younger rival Marta (Josefina Scaglione). And looming above it all is the mythical Spider Woman, whose kiss brings death.
But there’s a dark twist behind the two men’s growing closeness. Molina is a spy planted by the prison’s warden (Bruno Bichir), promised an early release if he extracts information about his associates from Valentin. But Molina grows to love Valentin—their relationship becomes intimate, though Condon plays the sequence with an excess of discretion—and though he claims to be politically indifferent, once released Molina works to deliver a message from Valentin to his confederates. But he is trusted by neither political side.
The blending of reality and fantasy is reflected in the casting, a device to embody the idea that artistic imagination can serve to ameliorate suffering and despair. Tonatiuh plays both Molina and Kendall, while Luna is Armando as well as Valentin. And Jennifer Lopez fills the roles of Luna, Aurora and the Spider Woman.
For more than thirty years critics have debated whether musicalizing Puig’s tale was tasteful or meretricious, and Condon’s screen version can only reignite the controversy despite the fact that it’s streamlined the show, eliminating some of its more obvious excesses. Musicals can deal with dark subject matter successfully, of course; it’s done in opera all the time, and on stage occasionally. But like the musicalization of “The Color Purple” filmed by Blitz Bazawule a couple of years ago, “Kiss” isn’t strong enough to put the argument to rest, especially since the songs—those, at least, that have survived the transfer from stage to screen—are out of Kander and Ebb’s top drawer. (These are the guys, after all, responsible for “Cabaret” and “Chicago,” and though “Kiss” won Tonys in its year for both musical and score, it’s not in their league.)
On the other hand, Condon, choreographer Sergio Trujillo, production designer Scott Chambliss and costumers Colleen Atwood and Cristine Cantella have done up the dance numbers with an artificial pastel sheen that mimics, and exaggerates, the look of classic movie musicals, while cinematographer Tobias Schliessler and editor Brian A. Kates have taken pains to present them, for the most part, in old-fashioned, full-body style, without the excessive panning and cutting that often afflicts musicals onscreen nowadays. The prison sequences, on the other hand, while good enough never develop the pathos they should, and tacking on a postscript celebrating the triumph of freedom with the fall of the military dictatorship in 1983 doesn’t carry the intended emotional punch.
The film was obviously designed as a showcase for Lopez, and she’s actually fine, if hardly indelible, in all her roles. But it’s Tonatiuh who stands out; his Kendall is rather bland, but his Molina is spectacular, rivalling the (admittedly somewhat overdone) characterization that won William Hurt accolades for Babenco’s film. Luna rather fades into the background beside his more powerful co-stars, Tonatiuh in the prison scenes and Lopez in the fantasy ones, and he’s certainly a more delicate revolutionary compared to Raul Julia’s macho version of Valentin for Babenco. But he brings a touchingly fragile quality to the role. No one else registers very strongly, though Bichir makes a creepily vile villain.
In the end “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a committed but arguably misguided effort to bring to the screen a lesser Kander-Ebb musical that probably should have remained on the boards.