30 years ago, at the 58th Academy Awards, Héctor Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture. It starred William Hurt who won Best Actor. Less than a decade later, Terrence McNally, John Kander and Fred Ebb adapted the film into a Broadway musical. At the 47th Tony Awards in 1993, that musical was up for 11 prizes. It won 7, including Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Featured Actor, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Book and Best Musical. Now, just in time for the three-decade anniversary of Babenco's film, and the nearly four-decade anniversary of the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig upon which all of this is based, writer-director Bill Condon (Beauty and the Beast and Chicago) had crafted this feature, which mainly works off the Broadway production.
Condon makes sense as a director here and not simply because he's led the adaptations of Broadway musicals or other big-budget song-and-dance shows but also because his two most successful works share similar themes as this one. This film is about two people who are basically locked up together and having to reckon with each other's differences, eventually working together or falling in love. In the case of Chicago (2002), which Condon wrote, it's similarly about two people locked up together, specifically in prison. Chicago is also similarly based on a Broadway musical by Kander and Ebb. In the case of Beauty and the Beast (2017), it's similarly about one person using another for ulterior motives. In the case of Gods and Monsters (1998), it's similarly about a gay man and a straight man practically forced together where one falls for the other, if not for each other.
Emmy winner, Diego Luna (Andor and Narcos: Mexico) stars as Valentin Arregui, a left-wing activist who is part of a revolutionary group in Argentina in 1983. The revolutionary group was fighting against a military dictatorship that had taken control of the country after a coup in 1976. The dictatorship reportedly disappeared about 30,000 people who were political dissidents. Many of whom were students, militants, trade unionists, writers, journalists, and artists. They were kidnapped, tortured and killed. There were many who were simply imprisoned. Valentin is one of those imprisoned dissidents. The warden at the prison has been torturing him in order to get information about the revolutionary group.
Babenco's film gives us more about Valentin's backstory with flashbacks to his time before being imprisoned. We get flashbacks to scenes of his relationship prior to being locked up. We learn that he was a journalist who met with members of the revolutionary group and helped them in various ways. He lived in the city and wasn't some resistance fighter who used weapons or any kind of violence against anyone. It also emphasized how he was sympathetic to the cause but he never really wanted to die for the cause. Condon's film gives the impression that Valentin is more militant and more significant to the revolutionary group than he might be. Valentin's involvement or standing either way doesn't matter here, mainly because the film isn't really about understanding Valentin's cause.
Tonatiuh (Promised Land and Vida) co-stars as Luis Molina, a fellow prisoner who shares Valentin's prison cell. Luis is homosexual. He's also quite flamboyant and feminine in his personality and behavior. He also fancies himself very fancy in that he likes the finer things, even in his prison cell. He's a bit of a diva. He's also very talkative, which annoys Valentin who is very quiet, out of necessity, and stoic. Luis likes to wear his emotions on his sleeve. He's in prison because he was caught being gay. He's desperate to get out of prison because of his sick mother who needs help. Luis is very apolitical or the political cause at hand is something to which he's purposefully blind. The point of the film or Luis' arc is that he comes to care about the cause through his interactions with Valentin.
Unfortunately, Condon's feature removes a lot about the political cause at hand and we're left to grasp at air. As a result, there's a bit of remove from the characters here. It makes the whole thing feel more like an intellectual exercise rather than a story with fully fleshed out people in it. The film works on a basic level in that it becomes about two men trapped in a cell trying to cope with their incarceration. One deals with it by shutting down. The other deals with it by opening up. Specifically, Luis opens up and he does so by telling Valentin about the cinema and his favorite celebrity on the silver screen. As such, the film becomes a kind of meta-commentary on Hollywood films of the 1940's and 50's.
Jennifer Lopez (Out of Sight and Selena) also stars as Ingrid Luna, an actress who is the aforementioned favorite celebrity of Luis. We see posters of her on the wall of the prison cell next to Luis' bed. As Luis is telling Valentin about Ingrid's films, Condon then takes us into scenes that are re-creations of Ingrid's films. Yet, it's Luis' fantasies where he and Valentin are also players in those films. Those re-creations are musical numbers and a lot of them are staged, as if they were taking place on a Broadway stage. In one scene, that's literally the case. This is how most musicals are done even Jon Chu's Wicked (2024) and Steven Spielberg's West Side Story (2021). However, both those films clearly had bigger budgets that could make their stages or sets feel more real or more expansive where the characters felt like they were in an open world instead of a boxed-in stage. Now, feeling boxed-in could be a purposeful choice, since this film is about two guys boxed into a prison, but the musical numbers here are meant to be an escape that takes you out of that prison box, not keep them in it.
Lopez is fine as nothing more than a song-and-dance machine. Whether it's ballet, vaudeville, burlesque, modern or even Latin-style dancing, Lopez nails it all. She belts out the lyrics with the best of any female Broadway star, while not necessarily surpassing them. She's gorgeous, dolled up like the icons of the 40's and 50's. She's glamor personified. Unfortunately, that's all she is. Her character here is more or less an avatar for Luis. He wishes he could be her, as he simply wishes he could be a woman. The film doesn't necessarily dwell in whether Luis is transgender or simply gender nonconforming or simply a gay man embracing his feminine side. It's simply through her that he can express his innermost desires.
I'm not sure it fully works because it would make more sense if Tonatiuh played the role of Ingrid Luna or her alter ego of "Aurora." Obviously, having a big-name star like J.Lo in the film helps to sell the film and possibly attract an audience, specifically a Latino audience. Having her as the idealized version of who Luis wants to be is clearly the intention here, but that point would have been sold more if it were Tonatiuh actually playing that role. The way it is now, it allows Tonatiuh's Luis to comment on the tropes and stereotypes of gay or queer characters in Hollywood films from the 40's and 50's, which are interesting on an intellectual level, but because there are so many musical numbers, it essentially sidelines Luis in what's supposed to be his story. The 1985 film didn't have all those musical numbers, which gave Luis more screen time and centered him more.
Otherwise, what is amazing is that this is a big-screen romance between two Latino men. There have been LGBTQ films from Latin countries like Puig's home country of Argentina where this film is set. The films of Babenco and Marco Berger are such examples. Diego Luna was himself in one such LGBTQ film from Mexico called Y tu mamá también (2001). There was even the TV series Love, Victor (2020), which centered on a young Latino who comes out as gay. Given that this film is being released in October, which is LGBTQ History Month, it's great to have this film and have both queer characters played by Latino men. One of whom is actually queer in real life. It's great in terms of representation of queer Latinos. However, Sean Mathias' Bent (1997) or HBO's Oz (1997) still stand as the best properties I've seen involving queer men in prison.
Rated R for language, sexual content and some violence.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 9 mins.
In theaters.