Ingrid Luna is not real. She is a larger than life actress supreme, enchanting the imaginations of her adoring audience, including a fabulous deviant sharing a dirty cell with a political prisoner. Naturally, the only woman who could portray her in the film version of the Tony-winning musical is Jennifer Lopez. Kiss of the Spider Woman could cause some eye rolls from JLo skeptics, but Bill Condon’s film is a well-made ode to technicolor musicals anchored by the stellar performances of Diego Luna and Tonatiuh. I still prefer the original film, but this one is going for something a bit different, more grandiose.

The conceit remains the same: window dresser and public indecency offender Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) is forced to get close to revolutionary Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), getting any secrets he can out of this principled man fighting Argentina’s dictatorship. To pass the time, Molina recounts the plot to his favorite film, Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring his favorite actress, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). The pair take roles within Molina’s fantasy, as the lines between fact and fiction start to blur, as do their loyalties. Plus, they sing!

Condon makes the obvious choice to fully divide these two worlds – songs from the prison have been excised, only the fantasy remains (of course, you can tell which prison guards have theater bodies and are going to appear in the tale of the Spider Woman as JLO’s backup dancers). This leaves the prison side of things sometimes too much of a drag between songs, as we’re wallowing in Valentin and Molina’s misery. Though their suffering turns to tragic romance, there’s more brutality than you might want when JLo isn’t around.

Molina slowly breaks down Valentin’s walls, unknowingly exposing his own secrets in the process. Luna and Tonatiuh are excellent scene partners, responding to each other with both kindness and savagery depending on the moment. Due to the story being art and not a didactic morality play, Molina’s gender situation is never fully spelled out. The character is likely a trans woman, but does not have the language to describe himself as such. Casting a talented genderfluid actor like Tonatiuh (he/they) helps support the queer text instead of diminishing it. Condon’s connection to the story comes through in his adaptation, which deals with Molina’s identity in a thoughtful and open-ended way. Condon is fascinated by monsters, and how is a “gender deviant” any different than the Bride of Frankenstein?

Like all recent films, especially made for streaming, there’s too much digital sheen overtaking the imagery. Thankfully, the colors really shine in the musical sequences. But the point of those scenes is the artifice – can’t reality seem real without sapping all life out of it? Is it all done so JLo can shine even brighter? Kiss of the Spider Woman makes a great case for leaving fantasy behind, but never forgetting how it inspired you.

Kiss of the Spider Woman
Dir. Bill Condon
2025
128 min

Opening Friday 10/10 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, West Newton Cinema, Kendall Square Cinema, and all local AMCs