Start the week with a film: ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ is a colourful, stirring musical
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Kiss of the Spider Woman has had a long journey. It originated as a novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig in 1976, which then yielded a play, a stage musical and an Oscar-winning film by Hector Babenco. Along the way, the story kept changing in content and form to suit the requirements of the medium.
The latest iteration is the 2025 movie inspired by the musical. Although making major alterations to the source material, the new Kiss of the Spider Woman retains one of the big ideas in Puig’s novel: personal transformation as a form of resistance to state repression.
Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman draws on the director’s past experience of directing musical films. Starring Tonatiuh, Diego Luna and Jennifer Lopez, the English-language film is out on the Lionsgate Play streaming platform.
It’s 1983. Argentina is under a military dictatorship. Gay window dresser Molina (Tonatiuh) is imprisoned in the same cell as the Marxist dissident Valentin (Diego Luna). The placement is deliberate. The prison warden, taking advantage of Molina’s vulnerability, wants Molina to spy on Valentin.
The attempt is initially unsuccessful. Molina is a chatterbox while Valentin prefers the quiet. Valentin, a progressive activist who likes to analyse everything through social theory, also dislikes Molina’s self-deprecating ways and tendency to...