When “Kiss of the Spider Woman” premiered on the Sundance Movie Competition in January, it was within the shadow of President Trump’s return to workplace.
Simply days earlier, Trump had begun his time period with a wave of government orders to increase the nation’s immigration detention infrastructure, fast-track deportations, take away protections stopping Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from concentrating on colleges and church buildings, and a declaration that the U.S. authorities would acknowledge solely two sexes.
Referencing these developments forward of the screening in Park Metropolis, Utah, writer-director Invoice Condon informed the viewers: “That’s a sentiment I think you’ll see the movie has a different point of view on.”
Launched in theaters Oct. 10, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is about within the last yr of Argentina’s Soiled Warfare, the violent army dictatorship that spanned from 1976-1983. The story begins within the confines of a Buenos Aires jail, the place newfound cellmates Valentin Arregui Paz (Diego Luna) and Luis Molina (Tonatiuh) discover they’ve little in widespread. Arregui is a principled revolutionary devoted to his trigger, whereas Molina is a homosexual, flamboyant window dresser who’s been arrested for public indecency.
Undeterred by their variations, Molina punctuates the awful existence of their imprisonment — one marked by torture and deprivation — by recounting the plot of “The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a fictional Golden Age musical starring his favourite actress, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez), casting himself and Arregui as her co-stars. Transported from their dreary cell to the intense, indulgent universe of the musical, their important conflicts turn into a quest for love and honor, slightly than a battle for his or her fundamental human rights.
When Argentinian creator Manuel Puig started writing the celebrated novel, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” in 1974, it was only a yr into his self-imposed exile to Mexico as his native Argentina lurched towards authoritarianism. By the point the ebook was launched in 1976, a army junta had seized management of the federal government. The subsequent seven years had been marked by the pressured disappearance of an estimated 20,000-30,000 folks, a lot of whom had been kidnapped and brought to clandestine detention camps to be tortured and killed. Amongst these focused had been artists, journalists, pupil activists, members of the LGBTQ+ group and anybody deemed “subversive” by the regime.
Initially banned in Argentina, Puig’s novel has been tailored and reimagined a number of instances, together with as an Oscar-winning movie in 1985 and a Tony Award-winning musical in 1993. With every iteration, the central components have remained unchanged. And but, because the 2025 adaptation arrived in theaters this month, this queer, Latino-led story of two prisoners preventing the claustrophobia of life beneath fascism feels directly like a minor miracle, and a startling wake-up name.
Tonatiuh, left, and Diego Luna within the film “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Sundance Institute)
Within the months for the reason that movie’s Sundance premiere, the parallels between the fraught political local weather of Seventies Argentina and that of our current have solely turn into extra pronounced.
Below Trump, an countless stream of escalating violence from masked federal brokers has turn into our new regular. ICE officers have been filmed apprehending folks outdoors of immigration court docket; firing pepper balls, rubber bullets and tear gasoline at journalists, protesters and clergymen; and, earlier this month, they descended from Black Hawk helicopters, utilizing flash-bang grenades to clear a Chicago condominium constructing in a militarized raid that had males, girls and kids zip-tied and faraway from their houses. Because the nation’s immigrant detention inhabitants reaches file highs, widespread stories of abuse, neglect and sexual harassment, notably towards LGBTQ+ detainees, have emerged from amenities throughout the U.S.
Amidst these headlines are folks identical to Molina and Arregui — activists, artists and human beings — discovering their very own methods to outlive and resist an more and more paranoid and repressive authorities. And whereas Arregui’s intuition is to stay unwavering in his trigger, Molina’s is to retreat into the glamorous, over-the-top world of the “Spider Woman.”
In dazzling musical numbers expertly carried out by Lopez, who delivers every music and dance with all of the magnetism of a real Previous Hollywood icon, each the prisoners and the viewers can’t assist however be drawn additional and additional into her Technicolor internet.
Jennifer Lopez and Tonatiuh within the film “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”
(Roadside Sights)
It may be simple to put in writing these moments off as nothing greater than a superficial distraction, as Arregui does early on, and characterize musicals as shallow and cliche. At first, Molina is joyful to confess that’s why he loves them, however the reality is extra difficult.
Throughout Argentina’s dictatorship, discrimination and assaults by paramilitary teams towards LGBTQ+ folks grew to become an increasing number of frequent. Molina accepts the position society has solid him in, permitting himself to be the “monster,” the “deviant” or the “sissy” that folks need him to be, whereas retreating mentally into the world of traditional movies and popular culture. For him, their magnificence is a salve — a possibility to desert actuality and solid himself in a job that doesn’t truly exist for him.
Although he by no means explicitly claims an id, it’s made clear that he doesn’t simply love “La Luna” — he desires to be her. And of their first function lead position, the queer, L.A.-born actor Tonatiuh embodies all of Molina’s contradictions — his bluster, his ache, his radiance — to heart-wrenching impact.
As Molina and Arregui develop nearer, the boundaries between actuality and fantasy start to soften, and their previously inflexible perceptions collapse together with them. Arregui takes on a few of Molina’s idealism, and the musical he as soon as noticed as a drained cliche turns into one thing invaluable: a sliver of pleasure that may’t be taken from him. A cynic satisfied of the world’s brokenness, he realizes that revolutions want hope too.
Within the movie’s last act, whereas the world round Molina hasn’t modified, he has. Nonetheless trapped throughout the confines of a society that’s doing its greatest to crush him, he adopts Arregui’s integrity and realizes that he has a selection: “I learned about dignity in that most undignified place,” he says within the movie. “I had always believed nothing could ever change for me, and I felt sorry for myself. But I can’t live like that now.”
Just like the movie throughout the movie, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” isn’t an escape. It’s a lifeline — and a reminder that, even within the darkest of instances, artwork has the ability to move us, maintain us and embolden us to be courageous.
