Jennifer Lopez Is not one of the actresses who disappear in a role. First, she is too famous that the audience can completely distinguish an artist from character. Often these characters, whether selena or in last year ”Unstoppable“As a sports mother, extensions of her persona, astral forecasts of her status as a global pop-up star in a fantasy film world are due to her song-and-dance gifts. For another, a Jennifer Lopez Joint is always more about her presence – her name on the cursor, her face under the big bright lights – than her skills in disappearing in a character.
Author/Director Bill Condons ”Spider woman“A new screen version by John Kander and Fred Ebb Broadway Musical himself inspired by Manuel Puig’s novel and Héctor Babencos Oscar winner from 1985, could not make any better casting than Lopez as Ingrid Luna, a fictional screen and Latin American version of a golden age by the Hollywood actress. Ingrid only exists as a figure in the imagination of Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay prisoner in politically counterfeit Argentina in 1983, who tells her cellmate Valentin (Diego Luna) the act of a movie with her as Aurora. Lopez gets the mother to all air brushing jobs in filmMusical sequences, which are shot, perhaps unusual in 2025, as an Old School Hollywood musical and not as, say, 2002’s spotted “Chicago”, John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse Musical Adaptation Written by Condon and directed by Rob Marshall. That movie relied on zooms, close -ups and hard cuts on bodies, while the metafictive “Kiss of the Spider Woman’s” Musical scenes are shot stake, with actors such as Lopez, Tonatiuh and Luna in the Ramstoppen to the toe.
But there is something stile and old about the presentation, especially when it is in contrast to the more steds, simply shot, coverage -like hand -held sequences in the film’s current in that prison. Tonatiuh (known for the TV series “Vida” and “Promised Land” and last year’s Netflix-Streaming Smash “Carry-On”) provide a severe star manufacture such as the Flamboyant and Reverie inclined Luis, restores the story Latin American roots after William Hurt played him to An Oscar victory in 1986.
But what is a star production when the package around the actor is otherwise so common and O-kosmic? Lopez, while it was impressive as a vamping, dreamed up screen star in the Silhouette by Rita Hayworth or any other Pin-Up that you would also have plastered on the walls of your prison cell if you were a gay Hollywood movie obsessive, do not ‘t get the chance to do something risky or vulnerable. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a spotted Ode to the elves and radicals, Maricons which has recycled its oppression and media knowledge to an overstatement, fuck-IF-I-CARE-WHAT-YOU-THINK Political identity. Yet there is nothing revolutionary with the film that contains them.
In a halted torture complex in a Buenos Aires prison when military dictatorship is raging in the outside world, Luis is locked up for public unfairness, while Valentin is behind bars for its participation in a left -wing revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government. (The president referred to in Puig’s novel from the 1975 set was Juan Perón, although the date change here places dictator Reynaldo Bignone as head of state.) Luis has been brought there as a spy and collaborates with officials to extract Intel from Valentin about The The The Thea the the the the the one the group; In exchange, Luis will receive a reduced penalty and endless delicious regulations to share with valentine. Like Roxie Hart in “Chicago” or Sally Bowles in “Cabaret”, Luis flees to a fantasy world far from the shit -colored cell where he and Valentin share a dirty toilet. He takes Valentin into his imaginative resale of a grand Ingrid Luna classic where she plays both Diva Aurora and a spider woman whose kiss can kill.
Lopez’s Spider Woman gets a bad Pixie wig and even more good looking goth that is suitable for an enchanting, bitchy succubus. But I’m not sure how set in the project’s camp potential Condon ever, or whether he is ready to support that this movie in-movie can actually be bad. The gay director of “Dreamgirls” and “Gods and Monsters” (still his best film, and another Hollywood -Met Fighting History, the time to flame “Frankenstein” director James Whale) is not incapable of a lower touch, but it has Never used here in a movie that prefers to take its source material more seriously, a more straight face, quote-ons beautifully mounted Oscar type of film.
At the same time, the Ingrid Luna-musical sequences and songs unfortunately (sorry) are hardly memorable-adorned in a throwing architectural style that mixes Art Deco and Art Nouveau, with production designer Scott Chambliss which is relishing in plastic furniture and cotton-made colored cover. Musicals like “wicked”, for better or worse, have taken up the game when it comes to singing in the camera, and the song here often feels over-produced and autotuned, but I suppose it is in line with the film’s old-Hollywood ambitions. The action of Ingrid Luna’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman” film-inoma is meanwhile a thinly shaped romantic melodrama that also contains tonatiuh and Diego Luna that takes on roles. One wants to fuck her, the other wants her, and you can guess who the latter is: Back in the prison cell, Luis opens up for Valentin to identify more with women than his own male body, even if Condon’s “Kiss by Spider Woman” Digs only superficially in Luis Transness, a plot kink that loosens to nowhere except contextualize Luis’s presenting feminin. shame.
As in the novel and the musical, the two will eventually become lovers, but not explicitly until a rushed sex scene in the last act of the film, so rapidly incredible in their physical tasks (if you know, you know, because here is another movie where gay but can only attach it without any preamble) that it also feels like a fantasy. The most intimate moment shared between men means that Valentine has, eh, suddenly explosive diarrhea because the prison guards poisoned his food to make him talk. It is a foul but strange tender exchange when Luis cleanses him and helps to hide the state of valentine, a disease that takes valentine to the inevitable rock bottom of finally opening up about his personal and political life. Tonatiuh and Diego Luna really have an absorbent chemistry, one as a nourishing femme and the other a macho revolutionary, and “kisses of the spider woman” is most interesting when it braids those who oppose archetypes together, Luis and valentine share more common than they They ‘D Ever thought. But these scenes become claustrophobic, and it is perhaps through design, which makes us desperate to come back to Ingrid Luna Land.
There are not so many real divids left in the world, so Lopez, a US-born Latina that is ever skilled at Shapeshifting for all roles that require singing and dance, is probably the only person playing Ingrid Luna right now. Ingrid is meant to be an out-of-thi-world-big star, one that may only be found in our dreams. Lopez is one of the stars that float just above the ground and rarely come down to earth (even in “Hustlers”, her most decorated performance, she is just a little out of reach of the fur coat as a veteran stripper mentoring). It makes sense to the immobile contract star Luna, but her casting once again emphasizes the ordinary in the construction of the film’s prison-to-land-perfens scenes. It is a contrast Condon wants to troll, but it just leaves us to dream of a better screen dream.
Rating: C+
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” premiered by 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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