A largely lackluster musical with a compelling cast who get underserved at nearly every turn, Bill Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is an experience defined by missed opportunities. It boasts acclaimed performers in Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna, plus a joyous relative newcomer to movies in Tonatiuh, but the film never comes close to meeting them on their level. Even as it raises many pressing ideas with urgent relevance to our present moment, it’s not deep enough to actually confront or unpack them.
Instead, much like the fantasies its central character creates as a means of escape from a grim reality, the film looks the part with sufficiently colorful costumes and production design that ultimately prove emotionally flat. It’s all surface with no greater spark.
That the film, which has its roots in both the stage musical and the novel of the same name, winks at us about these shortcomings leaves it teetering on the edge of offering something closer to self-aware critique or knowing commentary. Unfortunately, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” lacks the courage of its characters’ convictions and never takes its potential anywhere meaningful.
You can practically feel the cast fighting against the constraints that the film increasingly saddles them with, which makes for a sporadically engaging watch. Tonatiuh, in particular, is a revelation, proving to be more than capable at carrying the entire production when it desperately needs him to. Be it in a grand monologue or a smaller unspoken moment, he’s nearly able to hold the film together even as it threatens to get tangled up in its own fantasies.
Outside of him, save for a standout musical number near the very end, the one-note songs themselves are mostly unmemorable and the repetitive dance numbers lack the necessary life to leap off the screen. Though Condon is clearly calling back to classic Hollywood musicals of the 1930s and ’40s, his well-intentioned attempts at homage can’t hold a candle to how well-crafted and alive those were.
Set during the last gasps of the so-called “Dirty War” in Argentina, when left-wing dissidents were brutalized, imprisoned and killed by the state from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, the film centers on cellmates Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) and Valentin Arregui (Luna). The former is the victim of homophobic persecution after being arrested for “public indecency” for having sex with another man, and the latter is a revolutionary the government is trying to get information out of.
The latest attempt involves trying to have Luis draw information out of an unwitting Valentin, dangling the promise of his freedom in front of him to get him to cooperate. Despite all this, the duo begin to draw closer and open up to each other, passing the time with Luis vividly recounting the movie within the movie “Kiss of the Spider Woman” starring his favorite actress (Lopez) in the hope this will provide some comfort to both of them.
While Luis and eventually Valentin find great joy and escape in the fantastical tale, no such rewards come to the audience for “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
Lopez, while certainly dancing all the right steps, is only ever a composite of a movie star who feels trapped in a surprisingly stiff production. She deserves better than what the film gives her, but there’s never a moment when she gets it.
When it comes to its grander ideas, there is plenty Condon seemingly wants to grapple with surrounding sexuality, gender, revolution, and salvation, though the film only gently pokes at each of them. Despite there being immense terror in seeing characters brutalized in prison after being abducted off the street by a fascist government, a chilling and increasingly relevant modern concern, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is no “I’m Still Here” as it seems to want to hold most of this at a distance. The only time the film comes close to making this connection is whenever we hear the pain in Tonatiuh’s voice or glimpse the joy in his eyes, but those moments are few and far between.
Most damning is this core thematic concept of fantasy, which could be potentially liberating or obscuring of pressing realities, but it’s something that the film never does much of anything with. Even when one echoes the other and Tonatiuh gets a fantastic finale, the production writ large ultimately rings hollow.
The final kiss of death that it draws you in for, an inevitable yet unearned closing note, serves as the last nail in the coffin of the film itself. No matter how much the cast tries to passionately act and sing their way out into the daylight, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” keeps them sealed up so tightly, all that emerges is a quiet whimper.
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” opens exclusively in theaters on Oct. 10.