From Sundance: Jennifer Lopez Dazzles in ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman'

Wrapped in a sparkling black dress bejeweled with faux spider webs, Jennifer Lopez teared up before a crowd of more than 2,000 people after the premiere of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” “I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” she said, addressing her lifelong desire to star in a musical like the ones she grew up watching with her mother.

Lopez, along with co-stars Tonatiuh and Diego Luna, put out career-defining performances in this film adaptation of the popular 1990s stage musical of the same name. Set in an Argentinian prison during a time of political upheaval in the 1980s, the film follows cellmates Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser, and Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), a Marxist revolutionary, as they navigate the backward conditions of a corrupt, junta-controlled penal system.

At first, Arregui doesn’t take to Molina’s peppy, outspoken personality. But Molina doesn’t take no for an answer and wins over Arregui through vivid retellings of classic films starring actress Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). Lopez steals the show in her musical performances as Luna’s film-within-a-film character Aurora, who hires an esteemed photographer for her magazine only to fall deeply in love with him. The catch: Any man Aurora falls in love with must be sacrificed to the deadly Spider Woman, also played by Lopez.

No doubt “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is ambitious, juggling Arregui and Molina’s unlikely, budding relationship, 1980s Argentine politics and LGBTQ+ culture, Ingrid Luna’s fictionalized filmography, Old Hollywood homages, and grand musical numbers. In spite of the odds, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” brilliantly coalesces these subjects in a feat of parallel plot structure that constantly enhances and recontextualizes — rather than merely repeats — its subject matter.

In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” the characters are up against the world, and they don’t always win. In a pivotal scene, as Arregui narrates the film within a film, he explains the terrible feeling of being unable to express your mutual love because of uncontrollable external forces. Such external forces, whether the prison warden beset on Molina and Arregui or the Spider Woman beset on Aurora’s true love, allow themes of resilience, personal growth, and togetherness to take hold through the characters and their ever-adapting, interconnected stories.

These stories couldn’t visually look more different, but it quickly becomes clear that looks aren’t everything. The technicolor dream world of Molina’s favorite musicals and the drab industrial gray world of Molina and Arregui’s prison cell are equally restraining — places where characters and audience members alike must confront their preconceived notions of what is inherently right and socially acceptable, especially when lives are at stake. Contrary to Arregui’s insistence, the musical numbers of the film within a film aren’t varnished and out-of-touch; they’re a way of fighting back, harnessing beautiful art to strike down the ugliness of corruption and exploitation.

Betrayal and the potential for betrayal loom large in “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” and every character must make important decisions at the expense of themselves, their closest friends, and the ideals they represent. There’s rarely a perfect, selfless, ready-made solution to any one problem, making every moment a revelatory peek into the true motivations underlying the film’s characters. Ultimately, there’s a sense of something bigger than yourself — some grand story, of love most likely, that orchestrates all other stories.

Molina often calls on Ingrid Luna for advice in his own life, and the film wonderfully blends reality reality (prison) and film reality (the film within the film) to pull back the curtain on life itself. In “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” life doesn’t imitate art, and art doesn’t imitate life; life is art, and art is life. It’s this throughline that allows every uncompromisingly individual and chaotic piece of the film to gel under one definitive umbrella. By seeking out the things that make art great in real life, real life becomes great — and vice versa. Every character learns this lesson time and again, even if it means rejecting the comforts of normalcy, stubbornness, and bodily safety to carve out their own slice of lifely contentment.

“What I love is to capture the spirit of those old movies, but not to just imitate them,” director Bill Condon said, referencing the Old Hollywood musicals that inspired him and cinematographer Tobias A. Schliessler. “You know, [“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is] its own thing.”

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” is very much its own thing — a template that more films should follow. There’s no such thing as too many ingredients, as long as the chef gets the most out of each ingredient and each ingredient contributes to a larger, more nuanced whole. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” bursts with its big influences and big personalities, and it wouldn’t be better any other way.

—Staff writer Joseph A. Johnson can be reached at joseph.johnson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @onlyjoejohnson.