Kiss of the Spider Woman - Sundance 2025

Kiss of the Spider Woman [2025]

Film

Valentín, a political prisoner, shares a cell with Molina, a window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form an unlikely bond as Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite silver screen diva, Ingrid Luna.

Musicals are back! They’re coming in all different shapes, sizes, and structures. Many are focused on telling stories about a greater variety of characters and with a wider scope of perspectives. They’re being sourced, conceived, and produced with renewed formal experimentation, even if the standard musical formula and tropes are still more or less in place. Kiss of the Spider Woman, written and directed by Bill Condon, is one such musical, a high-concept, multi-layered story with multi-roling performances told with a lot of bravado and a lot of heart. This film balances out its wide-ranging tonality with a lot of songs and corresponding set pieces that work really well and augment the larger storytelling goals in place rather than diminish them.

Based on the stage musical of the same name, Kiss of the Spider Woman is the second adaptation of the 1976 novel, following the 1985 Brazilian film adaptation. It’s set in an Argentinian prison during the National Reorganization Process (or Dirty War), which was the military junta and subsequent terrorism of Argentina between the fascist military government and the anti-communist opposition group that took place between 1973 and 1983. Housed in this Argentinian prison are many national prisoners, most of whom are anti-communists charged with political conspiracy and revolutionary dissidence. Understanding this political backdrop may be important to processing the film’s storytelling details, but I went in with none of this context and never felt overburdened. Notably, Kiss of the Spider Woman is a period piece within a period piece, an homage to the kind of Golden Age of Hollywood 1950s musical shot on a sound stage and in Technicolor, umbrellaed within a historical prison drama set in the 1980s (inspired by true events). While I can’t speak to how well this works as an adaptation or even an interpretation of its source material, I felt like the scenes were built on one another and came together nicely.

My biggest issue with the film has to do with its visuals. The multi-layered aspect of its storytelling seemed to work in Condon’s favor, blurring the lines between loving homage and any creative stamp he put on the project that is rooted in his own visual language. A lot of the musical set pieces are oddly framed and seem to lose track of the pulse of the vibrant choreography. Being that the musical segments are meant to feel like a throwback Hollywood musical, a genre in an era with a more simplistic approach to camerawork and visual flair, I’m mixed on whether they all feel like a cosplay impression rather than a creative step forward (think about what Spielberg did with West Side Story just a few years ago). Similarly, the prison scenes feel a little like director dress-up, as if Condon has never been at the helm for scenes this bleak and dreary. Even still, the filmmaking had enough choices along the way to carry the story and held my attention the entire time.

The strength of this film is in its performances, a three-hander between the better-every-time-you-see-him Diego Luna, the ageless wonder Jennifer Lopez, and newcomer/scene-stealer Tonatiuh, who was the breakout and standout. All three performers take on multiple parts and explore one another’s identities. Though some aspects are more complex than others, all of them need to sync up for the audience to fully buy in. Lopez, who is using her powers for the ultimate good here, plays with her fame and iconography in a more dynamic way than she usually has the opportunity to, capitalizing on her skillet and strengths as a dancer, singer, and on-screen presence. This is obviously way ahead of schedule, but I would not be surprised to see a lot of critical praise and attention paid to this cast in the coming calendar year.

You can’t talk about Kiss of the Spider Woman without exploring its themes of queerness and Latinx. It’s hard not to compare it to its peer, Emilia Pérez, which is currently in the heat of an Oscar race where it claims 13 nominations and is a frontrunner in several major categories. This film is like and unlike Emilia Pérez in many ways, some for better and some for worse; and while I hesitate to put one down to prop another up, Kiss of the Spider Woman is the more impressive and entertaining of the two and does a great job of balancing its complicated themes within its dynamic storytelling structure. Films that are artistically ambitious, politically outspoken, and emotionally tender should never fall out of fashion, especially those coming out at a time when musicals are having a kind of reinvigorated revival.

Froth

Reading the description of Bin Chicken at Offset Bier was the primary reason I opted to order it. Described on Beer Advocate as an "English Bitter," the brewery claimed it is an Aussie Mid Ale, a really easy-drinking beer that generally falls between 3.5 and 4%, or as I like to say, right in the State of Utah's preferred ABV sweet spot. There's less malt complexity here, but after you drink an 11.0% ABV Belgian Trippel before it, you need to balance things out and find some balance. Bin Chicken is auburn in its color, light and citrusy in its flavor profile, and malty enough to keep you interested. There's no chicken bouillon flavoring in this beverage, but it would pair well with some chicken nuggets.