Though she plays its vampy femme fatale, Jennifer Lopez is constantly receding from “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” The latest incarnation of Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel places its two prison cellmates — Molina, an eccentric romantic, and Valentín, a pragmatic revolutionary — squarely at the erotic and emotional center. J-Lo is essentially an elaborate distraction, which is just fine as the story goes, but not exactly a kinetic position for a star.
The film written for the screen and directed by Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters”) is a hybrid adaptation of Puig’s book and the 1992 musical it inspired, revered by Broadway fans for a dazzling and otherworldly performance by Chita Rivera. The macabre warble of her voice and the wild jangling of her limbs are at least as memorable as any part of the show by Terrence McNally. (Puig also adapted his novel into a 1983 play.) Rivera’s distinctiveness is probably why it’s one of the few musicals with a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb (“Chicago” and “Cabaret”) that haven’t seen a major revival.
The Spider Woman is a beguiling villain with a kiss of death played by Aurora, Molina’s screen idol. Onstage, Rivera lit up the abyss surrounding the cramped cell where her character was a figment of Molina’s fantasy life. Here, as in the 1985 film adaptation, Molina adoringly recounts the plot of the Spider Woman movie to Valentín — who initially scoffs but quickly gets hooked — dividing the viewer’s attention between their grim reality and Molina’s favorite movie.
Puig, who was born in Argentina in 1932, loved 1940s Hollywood films, calling them “totally stylized … dreams” that “allow you the possibility of a synthetic approach.”
That aptly describes Condon’s treatment of the cinematic world where Lopez plays dual parts: the goth-glam Spider Woman and a magazine editor whose blond coif seems to be restyled with every scene. Unlike the shades-of-gray Argentine prison, the sequences are polished and color-rich, set on the sort of soundstages where dance numbers naturally unfurl in black tie. (Cinematographer Tobias Schliessler worked with Condon on “Dreamgirls” and the live-action “Beauty and the Beast.”) In a conceit that’s both sweet and practical, Diego Luna (who plays Valentín) and newcomer Tonatiuh (Molina) also appear in the film within the film.
The high-contrast back-and-forth — between the inmates’ budding intimacy and the increasingly cockamamie movie — feels disjointed and eventually grows tiresome. How does the peculiar plot relate to their deepening bond? Not enough to worry much about. Maybe it wouldn’t feel like whiplash if Lopez were a more magnetic draw.
Because Aurora is filtered through Molina’s gaze, the ageless and pristine gloss that the “Hustlers” star brings to her performance tracks well enough: She’s honey-voiced and graceful like a celluloid siren. But that doesn’t make her compelling to watch. Rather than singular and strange, she’s blandly hyper-polished — proficient but without personality.
Not so the inmates turned lovers, whose relationship is far more tenderly detailed than in the stage musical, with Condon drawing influence from the dialogue-driven novel. (A handful of songs, including those by the chorus of prisoners and between Molina and his doting mother, have been cut.) The dissolving of boundaries between the two culminates in an unlikely romance that’s more captivating than the razzle-dazzle interruptions.
As a fluttering Molina with wide and sometimes wild eyes, Tonatiuh is a revelation, lending the role a witty and wounded softness. Molina in previous iterations has been portrayed as a gay man (William Hurt won an Oscar in the part), but is more clearly understood here as a trans woman lacking the opportunity to transition. (“As for my friends and myself, we’re a hundred percent female,” Molina tells Valentín in the book.) That the character lives in the blur between boundaries makes Tonatiuh’s sensitive portrayal all the more extraordinary.
Luna likewise does delicate work with Valentín, who decries sentimentality as weakness before slipping into his own deep well of feeling. The connection between the two men — which in every version of the story involves Molina spying on his cellmate to get parole — is a grounded slow burn. The film treats their kinship with a modern sensibility; in previous versions, their consummation has been queasy and forced.
That alone is a great achievement for this “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” in which jail seems more alive than the fanciful flights that are meant to escape it. If only the arachnid herself seemed at least a little deadly.
R. At area theaters. Contains language, sexual content and some violence. 128 minutes.
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