‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ Review: Bill Condon’s Uneven Adaptation of the Kander and Ebb Musical Shines Brightest in Jennifer Lopez’s Dazzling Star Turn

A touching dedication at the end of Kiss of the Spider Woman reads simply: “For Fred, Terrence and Chita.” That would be lyricist Fred Ebb, playwright Terrence McNally and original star Chita Rivera, key figures behind the 1993 Broadway musical, alongside composer John Kander and stage director Harold Prince. The show won six top Tony Awards and ran for just over a year, though critics and audiences were divided, and it’s mostly considered a second-tier musical by the standards of Kander and Ebb, the celebrated team behind Cabaret and Chicago.

Bill Condon sets himself a tough assignment trying to transform the tricky material into a great movie musical, but thanks in part to laudable work from his three leads, he occasionally comes close. The writer-director revisits an idea that worked well in his screenplay for 2002’s Chicago — paralleling squalor and splendor, with central characters stuck in grim reality seeking escape through Golden Age Hollywood musical fantasy.

In the stage show, set in Argentina in 1983, political prisoner Valentín Arregui is transferred to a cell already occupied by Luis Molina, a gay window dresser convicted on trumped up charges of public indecency. In Hector Babenco’s 1985 film, which won William Hurt a best actor Oscar as Molina, and in the Manuel Puig novel on which it was based, the two prisoners are already cellmates when the story begins.

Condon’s script makes the small, seemingly cosmetic change of having Molina (Tonatiuh) moved into the cell occupied by Valentín (Diego Luna), under instruction by the prison warden (Bruno Bichir) to extract information from the leftist revolutionary, part of a group of rebels attempting to overthrow the military dictatorship.

That simple switch means the fantasist is now thrust into the domain of the hardline ideologue, and not vice versa. While Valentín initially is hostile to his new cellmate, wanting only to read and think, not talk, Molina now has the function of bringing a feminine softness, light and warmth into the harsh environment. That lays subtle foundations for a developing relationship between the polar opposites that is less transactional and more grounded in genuine feeling. It puts the emphasis on this being a love story.

But getting there can be a bumpy ride. As compelling as Luna and Tonatiuh are in the roles, their scenes at times feel flat and stagy, only gradually gathering force once Valentín accepts Molina’s friendship, and even more so, when Molina nurses him back to health after he’s been tortured and beaten by prison guards to within an inch of his life.

Thankfully, they get to bust out of prison at frequent intervals in the movie within the movie, which is where Condon’s flair for musical showmanship pays off. Molina is obsessively devoted to glamorous screen star Ingrid Luna, known simply as “Luna” to her adoring public — more likely a dwindling few who remember her. Unlike in the stage show, where Molina skipped from one of her star vehicles to the next, here he’s fixated on just one of Luna’s films, the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Weaving an entire narrative around that title, Condon enhances the metafictional aspects already present in the novel. He makes those campy escapist interludes the throbbing heart of the film, bursting with Technicolor vitality and splashy production numbers and big, bold feelings. It also allows the writer-director to mirror the plotlines between reality and fantasy more closely, if at times a tad forcibly.

Those scenes give Jennifer Lopez one of the best roles of her career as Luna, putting her singing and dancing bona fides to excellent use. She looks sensational in Colleen Atwood’s stunning costumes, and the verve she brings to her songs lifts the entire movie. It’s a part that calls for a larger-than-life presence, and Lopez supplies it.

At first, Valentín shows no interest in Molina’s frippery, but once he gets started on his detailed narration of the loopy movie plot, the political prisoner begins eagerly requesting further installments. In the movie, Luna plays Aurora, a fashion editor for a glossy Latin American magazine, while Molina puts himself in the story as her fawning, gay-coded assistant, Kendall. In an amusing aside, Molina tells Valentín that the actor playing Kendall butched it up so much that he killed the humor. But it’s Molina’s retelling, so he can take whatever poetic license he wants.

Aurora is professionally accomplished but unattached, unable to commit to a man. That seems likely to change when she meets dashing Armando, a photographer who suggests they go up north to shoot the winter issue among the real people.  He’s played by Valentín in Molina’s version, with a pencil mustache instead of prison stubble.

Complications ensue when a younger rival for Armando’s affections, Paolina (Aline Mayagoitia), appears at a ritzy nightclub — sure, it’s a humble village of “real people,” but it’s a movie musical, so they still need cocktails, evening wear and a live band, duh, and you should see their carnival outfits. Also creating friction is the club’s gangster owner Johnny (Tony Dovolani), who takes a liking to Aurora after they burn up the floor in a sizzling dance. “No matter how hard Hollywood tried to make her all-American, she remained Latina,” swoons Molina, who admits he would love to be a woman.

The bigger threat to Aurora and Armando finding happiness becomes clear when they learn of the mythical Spider Woman, a predator who demands once a year that a woman from the village sacrifice the man she loves, on whom she plants her deadly kiss. Naturally, Lopez doubles as the Spider Woman in the movie, giving a nod to Rivera and perhaps also to Sonia Braga in the Babenco film, while molding the role to fit her own persona. Slinky and sensual in a glittering black and silver outfit that drips lacy webbing, she looks like an arachnid Louise Brooks with her spiky bob. The effect is spectacular.

As that scenario plays out in a melodramatic crescendo, the stakes in the prison are raised, too, when the warden starts tightening the screws. Diego Luna and Tonatiuh play the escalation of feeling between Valentín and Molina — love, desire, guilt — with searing poignancy. But it’s in this final stretch that the back-and-forth becomes labored and convoluted, muting the impact of the tragic closing scenes.

Still, even in this imperfect version of a flawed show, there’s plenty to savor. Luna, always a charismatic actor, fills Valentín with fire and anger and disgust in the beginning, then channels all that passion into tenderness. In a head-turning breakout performance, Tonatiuh (seen recently in Carry-On) can flip from proud to humiliated, self-dramatizing to selfless, often within a single line reading. We see the conflict of a man thirsting for freedom but deeply torn about gaining it via betrayal.

Even if some of Valentín’s more progressive, anti-macho attitudes seem tailored to contemporary sensibilities, there are lovely moments in which he sternly tells Molina to stop with the self-mockery. Reflecting the hand of McNally in the material, the musical was always groundbreaking in its multidimensional depiction of an unapologetically gay man, not a caricature but a person with humor and dignity. The care and understanding fostered between Molina and Valentín feed directly into the movie’s views on gender, sexuality and masculinity, most of which can be traced back to the novel.

Musical theater completists might blanch at the number of songs Condon has jettisoned, though he includes most of the key numbers from the show along with others that were written for it but cut during development. Few of the songs are essential in terms of advancing the plot, but they provide wry commentary and riotous color. Unlike many musicals that are cut so frenetically you can barely see what the dancers’ legs are doing, editor Brian A. Cates lets the numbers breathe and DP Tobias Schliessler’s wide angles allow us to appreciate the vigor and sexiness of Broadway veteran Sergio Trujillo’s choreography.

The ideally cast Lopez is the movie’s highlight, perhaps inevitably with such a scene-stealing role, while Luna does an impressive job keeping up with her in the dance numbers. His dynamic Latin lover moves make up for a pleasant but thin singing voice, unlike Tonatiuh, whose confident vocals are full-bodied and rich in feeling. And no knock on Hurt’s performance (opposite the sublime Raul Julia as Valentín), but it’s gratifying to see an out queer actor cast in a milestone role.

Whether this was a musical that cried out for big-screen treatment is open to debate, and some might say it adds little to the story that wasn’t conveyed in the previous screen version. But it’s a fine showcase for three magnetic performers.