The part of Luis Molina, the gay prisoner with a penchant for Hollywood’s Golden Age at the heart of “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” has been good to actors over the years. It’s what got William Hurt his first best actor Oscar, for Héctor Babenco’s 1985 film adaptation. Several years later, Brent Carver would win a Tony for John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Broadway musical.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the standout in Bill Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” (in theaters Friday) is the person playing Molina. Still, it takes a special kind of actor to make such an immediate impact as Tonatiuh, a relative newcomer, does in this film. They don’t even need all the window dressing of the fantasy movie musical sequences to make their scenes come alive.
“Kiss of the Spider Woman,” has had many lives, first as a novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig, published in 1976 and widely banned. It imagines the meeting of two cellmates in an Argentine prison, Molina a romantic dreamer, and Valentín ( Diego Luna ), a Marxist revolutionary. They develop an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot to his favorite movie: A fictional musical called “Kiss of the Spider Woman” starring the fictional screen siren Ingrid Luna (played by Jennifer Lopez ).
The latest is an adaptation of the Broadway musical, with Condon and late playwright Terrence McNally co-credited for the script. Set in Argentina in 1983, amid the military dictatorship’s war on its political opponents, the film alternates between the dreary reality of the prison cell and the lavish MGM-styled musical world in Molina’s imagination. Valentín resists hearing about it at first — too busy being serious and reading Lenin. “Well, that sounds fun,” Molina deadpans, before throwing out his own quote, “The struggle is not over until all men are free.” No, it’s not Lenin, it’s Cyd Charisse in “Silk Stockings.”
But Molina is a persuasive sort and a transfixing storyteller and soon Valentín is wrapped up in this fantasy world too. Movies are dreams, Molina says, admitting that nobody claims that “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is the greatest movie ever made. In a funny aside that could be a self-conscious defense of the movie we’re watching, he says it’s “too ambitious for its own good, too many flavors in the stew.” And yet, he adds, “there’s so much beauty.”
The world of the movie within the movie is candy colored splendor, a stark contrast to the dour environs of the prison. With Kander and Ebb’s songs, Collen Atwood’s lush costumes, Scott Chambliss’ sets, and Sergio Trujillo’s classic choreography, Lopez has an enviable canvas to work with. And she seems to relish the heightened, glamorous spectacle of it all, singing and dancing and doing the MGM thing with all the diva gusto she can muster.
Molina imagines himself in the role of her devoted assistant, and Valentín as her love interest. And while it’s fun to see Tonatiuh and Luna all cleaned up and dashing in this fantasy world, you’re never exactly invested in the movie within the movie, beside basking in the visual spectacle. In that way, it is an escape from the misery of the cell. But for an audience member, the cell is where all the interesting drama and growth is happening.
Valentín and Molina are obvious opposites. Valentín is consumed with entrenched ideas of what it means to be a man, and that meaning is only derived through struggle. Molina’s head might be in the clouds but within those fantasies are wisdom and shrewd survival instincts too. He’s not been bunked up with Valentín accidentally: He’s an informant. Naturally, this transactional situation turns into love and, of course, tragedy.
Condon (“Gods and Monsters,” “Dreamgirls,” “Beauty and the Beast” ) is a journeyman filmmaker with an obvious passion for the material at hand. Oscar-nominated for writing the screenplay for “Chicago” (which he didn’t direct, Rob Marshall did), Condon directs his musical sequences more simply — allowing the dancing to shine. And it is fun to watch, a bit of frivolity and escapism.
But you’re always eager to get back to the cell for more Tonatiuh. Molina’s main stage might be a dull, claustrophobic prison cell, but Tonatiuh’s performance is vibrant technicolor.
“Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a Roadside Attractions release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “language, some violence, sexual content.” Running time: 128 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
