Kiss of the Spider Woman review: Jennifer Lopez dazzles, but is that enough?
Kiss of the Spider Woman has a rich and varied history, from Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel to the 1985 Oscar-winning drama by Héctor Babenco to the 1992 stage show on which this latest film is based. This makes viewing it in isolation nearly impossible, but even on its own terms, the 2025 musical movie by Bill Condon is a difficult sell. Set during the latter years of Brazil’s late-twentieth century military junta, it’s a tale of two wildly different prisoners and the escapist cinema they collectively imagine. The story is ripe for visual re-invention — or at the very least, visual panache. And while Condon’s version aims for something grandiose (while featuring updated sexual politics), its execution fails to capture the imagination, let alone anything resembling time and place. What is Kiss of the Spider Woman about? The film begins when an imprisoned Marxist revolutionary, Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), is introduced to his new cellmate, Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a queer and distinctly apolitical hairdresser arrested for public indecency. Condon’s film makes it much more explicit than in other versions — which is to say, through more direct dialogue — that Molina is a trans woman, even though she may not have the right terms to label herself in the movie’s 1981 setting. Whatever qualms Arregui might have about Molina’s identity fade rather quickly, which allows the duo to quickly become friends, despite their opposing natures. Arregui is a quiet, studious learner, while Molina is a gossip and a chatterbox. However, the former becomes entranced by Molina’s stories about Technicolor Hollywood musicals, especially one titled Kiss of the Spider Woman starring her favorite Latin American starlet, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). As Molina narrates the film to Arregui, the two picture themselves as supporting characters in its plot, while Condon cuts back and forth between this imagined cinematic landscape and the more dour prison reality they share. Molina has also been conscri
Kiss of the Spider Woman review: Jennifer Lopez dazzles, but is that enough?