SUNDANCE: ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman’ Understands What Musicals Should Be

Kiss Of The Spider Woman (2025) is not the first time Manuel Puig’s novel of the same name has been adapted. First, it started on Broadway by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb and then became a film in 1985 by Brazilian director Héctor Babenco. That said, writer-director Bill Condon isn’t standing in anyone’s shadow with his take on the tale of love, resistance, and compassion.

With a fully Latino cast, Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) takes place in a prison in Argentina, one reserved for political prisoners and dissidents during the Dirty War in 1981. Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna) is a political prisoner and leader in the revolution. Then, one day, Molina shows up. A window dresser, Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), is a gay man who was arrested for public indecency. Facing constant harassment and abuse from the guards, he has taken to putting himself down before anyone else can.

Where Arregui is stoic and studied (about leftist manifestos, of course), Molina is sensitive and dreamy. The former can not stop looking at the pain and violence in the street, but the latter is just looking at his posters of the most beautiful woman in the world, Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez). Tasked with retrieving information from Arregui by the warden, Molina tries to bring comfort to the cell. To do so, he begins to retell, scene by scene, a Hollywood musical starring his hero, La Luna.

Over the nights spent retelling the titular “Kiss of the Spider Woman” to Arregui, the two men grow close. They care for each other after great violence and learn when to be present in the world and when to retreat together into the musical.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is a career-best for Jennifer Lopez.

As Ingrid Luna, the starlet playing Aurora, Jennifer Lopez delivers a career-best performance. Campy and dramatic, it’s the one role where Lopez’s full range as an actor, singer, and dancer comes into focus with her own voice. While she is not the emotional weight of the film, she is an important part of the narrative, anchoring Molina in his darkest moments. La Luna guides him, cherishes him, and allows him to escape from the pain of his life. To star in a musical is hard, to follow in Chita Rivera’s footsteps is harder, and Lopez fearlessly takes on the challenge.

La Luna shows us how cinema comforts people. The power of the silver screen is to take our worries and give us a place to bury them. Kiss of the Spider Woman shows the audience why people love movies and, more specifically, how they save us in small doses when it feels like we can’t survive.

Lopez’s performance is gorgeous and highlights the director Bill Condon’s musical vision with a vibrant technicolor palette and wide shots that don’t rely on edits. Condon shows the audience the entirety of the dances on screen, calling back to Hollywood’s golden age beautifully. Always an homage to the camp and the glamour of that era. The stark difference in lighting, vibrancy, and costuming in the musical sequences and what we see in the prison with Arregui and Molina helps craft the atmosphere and emotion.

The whiplash the audience feels being pulled back into the violence of the cell is necessary. Molina recounts “Kiss of the Spider Woman” to Arregui as their escape. Over time, it becomes a haven for both men, with Arregui moving from belittling the film to embracing it with excitement.

Even with its expertly crafted musical numbers and sets, Kiss of the Spider Woman is superb because of Tonatiuh and Diego Luna’s chemistry. The two lean on each other, learn from each other, and ultimately understand that love is the strongest of forces, be that for another person or for their people.

As Arregui, Diego Luna offers a look at determination and machismo, even if he claims to hate the idea of it. His resiliency in body and spirit to his revolutionary cause is admirable, but his refusal to see those outside of it as anything but cowards is unlikable.

It’s only when Arregui begins to lower his walls and break down his own understanding of gender and resistance that he comes into focus. It’s then that we see the vulnerability that he tried to wrap in traditional concepts of masculinity despite proclaiming equality across genders.

Machismo and revolution are central in this this excellent techinicolor-inspired musical. 

Diego Luna’s ability to move between intimidating and caring is one of the film’s largest emotional successes. The bridge that he chooses to cross that Molina builds with his storytelling is a grand moment. It made me weep and smile. Ultimately, it made me understand that by opening yourself up to someone and meeting them where they need you, you can transform. Connection and love aren’t for just one person but for both and everyone else they will touch.

But as much Tonatiuh’s Molina changes Arregui, he also lets Arregui change him. He moves from a self-deprecating person who harms himself before others can to someone who carries his head held high. Molina learns that he should respect himself because even if the world doesn’t allow him to love who he wants, to act how he wants, or to even have the vocabulary to express who he really is outside a binary, he can still have pride. Molina is not a trivial piece of the world. That is as revolutionary as those who make the choice to physically fight.

Throughout the film, Molina makes it clear that he looks, but he does not see the horrors around him. He ignores the danger and violence, instead choosing to dissociate with La Luna as his north star. He holds on to her, viewing the world through her and protecting himself in her glitz and glamour.

A breakout film performance for Tonatiuh, they bring compassion and strength to Molina that shines as brightly as La Luna. In the film’s closing musical number and in Molina’s final moments on screen, you can’t help but scream inside, celebrating that Molina knows who they are. There is no shame as Molina walks down the street. Fear, yes, but there is no shame left, just dignity. Tonatiuh’s performance is an act of resistance so powerful, and much of the impact of this trans story is done by breaking down what the audience and Arregui believe gender to be.

Kiss of the Spider Woman enshrines queer identities in dignity.

While I make it a point not to compare the two films, I’d be remiss not to comment about Emilia Perez, a film that uses transitioning as a vehicle for its glorification of Narco culture. Where that film deals with racism, spectacle, and reducing trans identity to a surgery, Kiss of the Spider Woman enshrines queer identities in dignity and is analogous to revolution.

Where Emilia Perez teaches selfishness at any cost, Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) teaches its audience and its characters that they belong to something much larger than themselves—if only they show the kindness of opening up. One of these films is a caricature drawn by a carnie, and the other is a directorial masterwork when it comes to bringing a musical to the screen, but even more so in capturing humanity.

Molina’s moment to be seen as Molinita captures the liberation found in acceptance. This is a story of revolution first and foremost, and as many have come to understand, existing and loving are just as large a part of that as marching in the streets for those maligned for simply being who they are.

Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) is well aware of machismo; it damages people and movements. The film is fearless when approaching how leftist organizing has often left queer people out of their vision of an equitable future. As a film, it sees the ugliness of life, but it never loses the joy to be found in connection.

As Molina says, dignity is found in the most undignified place. Regardless of your status in life, you can and should fight for yourself and fight for love. Yes, this means pushing back on fascist regimes, but it also means finding beauty in your differences instead of speaking to yourself in the language of those who are harming you.

Bill Condon’s film is intimate and small while being a grand spectacle at the same time. I dare anyone to enter Kiss of the Spider Woman and walk out the same person. If anything, you walk out as someone better. In an increasingly violent and callous world, we need more films like this. Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) is a film we need now more than ever.

Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) premiered as a part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.