The Kiss of the Spider Woman is a musical remake of the 1985 Oscar-winning film. A gay man who wants to be a woman serves as the movie’s main protagonist. Those elements are played out onscreen in great detail, accompanied by foul language and the brutal treatment of political prisoners at the hands of a military dictatorship.
Luis Molina and Valentín Arregui are about as different as they come.
It’s 1983, and though the two men have both been arrested by Argentina’s military dictatorship, that’s about all they have in common.
Molina likes to talk. Arregui likes to think. Molina is frequently visited by his mother. Arregui hasn’t had any visitors. Molina loves movies. Arregui doesn’t care for them.
However, despite these differences, Arregui allows himself to be drawn in as Molina lays out the plot of his favorite movie, Kiss of the Spider Woman. It may, in fact, be a matter of life and death.
See, Arregui was imprisoned for his suspected role in a revolutionary front—one that seeks to overthrow Argentina’s military junta and put elected officials in office. He’s been tortured for information about the revolution practically every day. And Molina’s recollections of the Spider Woman are about the only things keeping him sane.
But there again, the differences between these two men come out.
Whereas Arregui has been steadfast and loyal to his comrades—refusing to talk under torture—Molina has been secretly making reports about Arregui to the warden.
Molina was arrested for “public indecency” after getting caught having sex with another man in a restroom. Because his crime has nothing to do with politics, the warden is willing to grant him parole—but only if Molina can get Arregui to confide information about the revolution’s next movements.
As I said, the two men are about as different as they come.
But opposites also attract …
Molina is a kind person. When Arregui is beaten and poisoned, Molina nurses him back to health, even helping Arregui clean himself in an attempt to restore some semblance of Arregui’s dignity.
Near the film’s end, Molina touches on that dignity, telling his mother that he was surprised to find dignity in prison, such an undignified place. But it’s clear that he’s referring not to himself but to Arregui.
Arregui is a brave man. And though he’s tortured daily, he never gives up his comrades to the prison guards.
Molina describes an actress’ fans as “worshipful.” He seemingly says a prayer to her, asking for her to deliver him from prison. Elsewhere, he envisions heaven as a place where he can finally be a woman and be with the man he loves.
As Molina describes the Spider Woman, we see the film recreated onscreen. In the plot of that film, a woman learns that her village is protected from evil animals in the jungle by a spirit called the Spider Woman. However, every 10 years, a woman in the village must sacrifice the man she loves to the Spider Woman, who cannot know love herself since her kiss is fatal. The curse is finally lifted when a man sacrifices himself for the woman he loves, selflessly allowing the Spider Woman to kiss him.
We hear someone went to see a “gypsy” for fortune-telling. A character in the Spider Woman sings about being able to perform healing miracles with her kisses. Dancers wear demonic-looking masks for one number. A cross hangs on a courtroom wall.
As mentioned above, Molina is unapologetically attracted to men. He also expresses a desire to be a woman, frequently dressing in women’s clothing and exhibiting feminine mannerisms. Both of these elements are played out in graphic detail onscreen.
Molina and Arregui eventually fall in love (despite both men initially insisting they have no interest in each other). They have sex—once onscreen, shown from the waist up, and once offscreen—and they kiss passionately several times. Elsewhere, before they become involved, they pantomime oral sex to trick some prison guards.
Arregui is confused by Molina’s desire to be a woman. He tries to break down the psychology of Molina’s gender identity, suggesting that Molina—who was raised alone by his mother after his father died—clung to feminine traits because he had no male example to live by. However, Molina rejects this idea, saying he simply wishes he could be a woman and enjoy all the things that women do.
In recreations of the Spider Woman, Molina envisions himself in the role of a closeted gay man. That character sings a song about his fervent desire to be a woman.
In his mind’s eye, Molina imagines what death is like. It plays out in a heaven-like sequence fashioned after his Spider Woman recollections. There, Molina is finally transformed into a woman wearing makeup, nail polish, high heels and an evening gown. He then dances romantically with Arregui before being led to his death at the kiss of the Spider Woman.
Molina talks about being in love with a man named Gabriel, who is married and has two children. However, Molina and Gabriel never acted upon their apparent mutual attraction. Later, Molina realizes that Gabriel was just leading him on because he liked the attention.
Before his tryst with Molina, Arregui says he’s in love with a woman named Marta, and he imagines her comforting him after a rough bout of torture.
Several couples kiss in the Spider Woman film-within-the-film. The character Aurora often wears formfitting, cleavage-baring evening gowns. Her dance numbers frequently display her rubbing her own hands over her body. The camera jumps between shots of her legs as she poses and shots of Molina’s legs as he poses similarly. Men and women dance sultrily. Some male dancers go shirtless while female dancers wear cropped tops.
Arregui calls Aurora “frigid” because her character refuses to have sex outside of love. He also says that gender is a social construct.
Arregui, as already mentioned, is tortured for information while in prison. Two guards frequently beat him up, often with one holding Arregui down while the other throws punches. At one point, he’s dragged out of his cell by his hair. Elsewhere, we see Arregui just before he’s subjected to shock torture, and we hear him screaming in pain.
We see Arregui post-beating, sporting bloody cuts on his face and chest. In one scene, we’re also shown scars on his back from previous attacks.
Prison guards attempt to poison Arregui. However, their first attempt fails as Molina knowingly eats Arregui’s tainted food. Molina, in agony, is carted off to the infirmary, where he’s sedated with drugs.
While Molina is recovering, the guards starve Arregui for three days. When Molina returns, they finally feed Arregui—but once again, the food is poisoned. The suspicious-but-starving Arregui eats it anyway, but he refuses to go to the infirmary. He knows that if he does, he’ll be administered morphine for the pain. And he worries what he might accidentally say while under the drug’s influence. (He also doesn’t want to become addicted to the substance.) So he suffers for hours, enduring vomiting and diarrhea.
Even though Molina shares information with the warden, he doesn’t escape unscathed. The prison guards are verbally abusive, and when he backtalks one, they escalate their cruelty to physical abuse. They threaten Molina and shove him up against a wall, essentially threatening to rape him if he acts out again.
Early on, Arregui loses his temper after Molina makes an ill-timed joke, grabbing the man and shoving him around. Molina is visibly terrified, and they both apologize for their actions.
Arregui tells Molina that when he was 15 years old, he and his sister attended a rally that was attacked by a man with a machine gun. He says 47 people were killed in that attack, two of whom were children, including his 14-year-old sister.
A man is shot and bleeds out on the ground. A few deaths and beatings that occur in the real world are artfully recreated in Molina’s reimaging of Spider Woman.
The prison guards frequently bring a professor they’re torturing to Arregui, hoping that Arregui will spill about the revolution to spare the man further torment. Arregui denies knowing the man. Eventually, they show Arregui the man’s dead body. We hear that thousands were killed and wrongfully imprisoned in the 1970s and ‘80s by Argentina’s military regime.
Molina points out that gay characters frequently die in Hollywood films, often by their own hands.
There are 16 uses of the f-word and seven of the s-word. We also hear uses of “a–” and “h—.” God’s name is misused a handful of times, and Jesus’ name is misused once.
Molina is called a “f-gg-t” several times as a slur. Prison guards force him to use the slur against himself in order to humiliate him. They also refer to him as a woman as an insult.
Characters in Molina’s Spider Woman drink alcohol. The protagonist Aurora smokes cigarettes, and another character smokes a cigar. Someone in that storyline drugs Aurora’s drink, causing her to pass out.
In the real world, Arregui and Molina are both poisoned. Molina is administered morphine in the infirmary, and he hallucinates a bit.
When Arregui is poisoned, he experiences diarrhea, and he’s ashamed when he soils himself. (We see a bit of the excrement on his underpants as Molina helps him clean up.) Not long after, Molina forces Arregui to vomit by shoving his fingers down Arregui’s throat. During these scenes, Arregui looks pale and sweaty. Elsewhere, we see Arregui from behind as he urinates.
Molina is verbally abused by prison guards for his sexuality. They use slurs against him. But he also has a self-deprecatory sense of humor, frequently talking badly about himself and even calling himself derogatory names.
The prison warden bribes Molina with freedom, using Molina’s sick mother (she has had multiple small heart attacks) as leverage. Initially, Molina reports what he can about Arregui—which admittedly isn’t much—but after falling in love with Arregui, he simply stalls.
Arregui and Molina disagree about what a “real man” should be. And they debate some somewhat sexist ideology.
People lie.
We learn that Arregui grew up in impoverished conditions with a house made out of mud and cardboard boxes.
If you only watched the trailers for Kiss of the Spider Woman, you might assume that it’s a delightful musical drama.
Well, it is a musical. And it is dramatic. But delightful, it is not.
Now, if you’re familiar with the 1985 version of the film (which earned a Best Actor Oscar for William Hurt and was nominated for three others), the Broadway adaptation of the story or even the original novel, written by Manuel Puig, then you already knew that.
This film has a much more serious tone, focusing on a political prisoner tortured during Argentina’s notorious 1976-83 military junta. His cellmate, who is secretly reporting on him to the prison warden, unpacks his favorite movie in an attempt to gain his trust. Instead, the two fall in love.
Graphic sexual scenes, foul language and brutal violence are all juxtaposed with light dance numbers—recreations of the songs from Molina’s favorite movie. Adding to the confusion is Molina’s equally confusing gender identity.
The movie wants audiences to believe that there’s “some kind of happiness for each of us.” However, it also ends on such a sad and solemn note that it seems to have missed its mark.
But even if Kiss of the Spider Woman had succeeded, those content concerns are still far too grave, far too explicit, for any families to even consider watching.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
