‘Kiss of the Spider Girl’ (2025) Evaluate: Jennifer Lopez’s Odd Meta-Musical

Cinema has lengthy been a mirror for political repression, and in Invoice Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Girl, that mirror is adorned with glittering sequins, drenched in melancholy, and distorted by the very energy constructions it goals to critique. A reimagining of Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel (and its stage musical adaptation and Oscar-winning 1985 movie), this 2025 movie leans into its meta-musical construction, shifting between the grim realities of an Argentine jail in 1981 and the dazzling escapism of Golden Age Hollywood pastiche. It’s each a narrative about survival and a meditation on the methods cinema itself turns into a survival mechanism — how movie generally is a salve for oppression, a software of management, or, typically, an act of resistance.

However Kiss of the Spider Girl can also be a movie struggling to search out its personal footing. Regardless of an enchanting premise, a powerhouse forged led by Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, and Tonatiuh, and a deliberate engagement with Argentina’s Soiled Warfare, the movie by no means totally decides what it needs to be: an intimate character research, a spectacle of camp and tragedy, or a grand assertion on the intersections of movie, queerness, and political violence. The result’s an bold however uneven musical that by no means fairly lands its most potent concepts.

The Jail as Cinema, the Cell as Stage

Kiss of the Spider Girl

2.5
/5

Launch Date

January 26, 2025

Runtime

128 minutes

Director

Invoice Condon

Writers

Invoice Condon, Manuel Puig

Producers

Barry Josephson, Ben Affleck, Benny Medina, Diego Luna, Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Halloran, Matt Damon, Sam Weisman, Greg Yolen, Michael Joe, Tom Kirdahy, Pamela Thur, Dani Bernfeld

Forged

• 
• 

  Tonatiuh Elizarraraz

  Luis Molina

Professionals & Cons

• The movie embraces classical Hollywood aesthetics with lush cinematography, melodramatic lighting, and grand musical numbers that evoke Rita Hayworth-era glamour.
• Lopez delivers a mesmerizing efficiency because the elusive Spider Girl, capturing old-school film iconography with magnificence and precision.
• The movie raises intriguing questions concerning the position of movie as each a type of resistance and repression, significantly within the context of Argentina?s dictatorship.

• The emotional connection between Valentin and Molina feels rushed somewhat than totally earned.
• Shifting between campy musical spectacle and heavy political drama creates a tonal dissonance that undermines its impression.
• Whereas it nods to Argentina?s Soiled Warfare, the movie by no means totally engages with its historic context.

The movie opens in Might 1983, two months earlier than the autumn of Argentina’s army dictatorship. The framing is stark: an overhead view of the jail, a chilly construction that, regardless of its rigidity, holds inside it a world ruled by its personal guidelines. This jail society is brutal, a microcosm of Argentina’s political repression. Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a homosexual window dresser imprisoned for “corrupting” a minor, is on the backside of its hierarchy—mocked, overwhelmed, and referred to as “a lady” as a type of degradation. Into his cell comes Valentin Arregui (Diego Luna), a Marxist revolutionary, whose physique is battered however whose ideological fervor is unbroken. The distinction is fast: Molina’s world is one in every of movie-star daydreams and grand performances, Valentin’s is one in every of grim actuality, resistance, and pragmatism.

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Their preliminary interactions are bristling with class resentment, political dogma, and deeply ingrained prejudices. “Why do you make your self so trivial?” Valentin sneers, dismissing Molina’s fantasies. For him, films are an opiate, a distraction fed to the plenty by these in energy. However for Molina, they’re an escape, a option to endure struggling when hope has lengthy been stripped away.

This pressure—between escapism and activism, between movie as a software of liberation and movie as a software of repression—is without doubt one of the film’s strongest components. However as a substitute of totally interrogating this dialectic, Kiss of the Spider Girl leans too closely into its visible extra, counting on spectacle somewhat than deepening the ideological conflict on the coronary heart of its narrative.

Jennifer Lopez and the Ghost of Golden Age Glamour

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Jennifer Lopez is Ingrid Luna, a film star in Molina’s fantasies who shape-shifts between a number of roles—Aurora, a seductive femme fatale; the Spider Girl, a mythic determine whose kiss is deadly; and a tragic display screen siren whose magnificence is each her energy and her jail. Lopez is luminous, her presence evoking the cinematic grandeur of Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, exuding Outdated Hollywood attract. She is the movie’s visible anchor, draped in satin and shadow, her actions choreographed with a precision that reminds us of her energy as a dancer and performer.

But, for all her magnetism, she is rarely greater than a projection of the boys who think about her. She exists solely of their fantasies—by no means as a totally realized character, however as an emblem, an avatar for his or her needs. The movie does little to offer Ingrid Luna company exterior of being the muse of male longing, making her really feel extra like a determine from a lavishly staged dream sequence somewhat than a personality integral to the emotional and political stakes of the story.

This alternative is deliberate, nevertheless it additionally exposes a important flaw within the movie: Kiss of the Spider Girl is so enamored with its personal artifice that it forgets to make us really feel the burden of its characters’ realities. The movie-within-a-movie idea works okay as an aesthetic gadget, nevertheless it fails to completely connect with the movie’s broader themes of energy, repression, and want.

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The Cinematic Language of Oppression

Condon and cinematographer Tobias Schliessler borrow closely from classical Hollywood strategies, embracing excessive key lighting, and deliberate framing that evoke the bogus grandeur of Forties melodrama. Molina’s flashbacks and fantasies are filmed within the fashion of Technicolor musicals, a stark distinction to the brutal austerity of the jail sequences. Using black-and-white movie inventory for newsreel-style segments additionally reinforces the historic actuality of Argentina’s Soiled Warfare, grounding the movie in a interval of actual political terror.

But when the movie is supposed to be a commentary on the intersection of cinema and authoritarianism, it by no means totally commits to this concept. The political backdrop stays broad, gesturing at Argentina’s dictatorship somewhat than interrogating it with specificity. Apart from temporary references to state surveillance, torture, and using cinema as a propaganda software, the movie doesn’t discover the deeper implications of its setting. At occasions, the Soiled Warfare seems like a backdrop somewhat than a necessary a part of the narrative.

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A Musical That Can’t Discover Its Rhythm

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Musically, Kiss of the Spider Girl struggles with adaptation. The rating by John Kander and Fred Ebb (of Cabaret and Chicago fame) is as lush and theatrical as one would anticipate, however on display screen, it feels oddly muted. The movie typically performs like a filmed stage musical, with little effort to reimagine numbers in a means that feels cinematic. The place one thing like Chicago (additionally tailored by Condon) used the language of movie to raise its theatricality, this model of Kiss of the Spider Girl stays static, its numbers feeling extra like interruptions than natural expressions of character.

The chemistry between Diego Luna and Tonatiuh is compelling in idea however lacks the build-up to make their relationship totally resonate. The emotional arc between Valentin and Molina is one in every of mutual transformation—one educating the opposite about love, the opposite about resistance—however the movie rushes by means of key moments, counting on dialogue-heavy scenes that typically really feel like exposition dumps somewhat than lived-in emotional exchanges.

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There’s additionally a pressure between the movie’s camp sensibility and its political ambitions. One second, the movie leans into flamboyant, high-drama extra, and the subsequent, it expects us to grapple with the brutality of torture and political imprisonment. The tonal dissonance makes it tough to completely immerse in both facet.

A Superbly Dressed however Thematically Unsure Movie​​​​​

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“To be your self is an act of revolt,” Molina tells Valentin, in one of many movie’s most overtly didactic moments. However Kiss of the Spider Girl doesn’t at all times know the best way to embody that revolt. It raises highly effective concepts about cinema, want, and political resistance however doesn’t develop them with sufficient depth to make them land.

In 1983, when Argentina’s dictatorship was crumbling, the true battle was one in every of reminiscence—of reclaiming the tales that had been erased, of resisting state narratives that sought to rewrite historical past. Kiss of the Spider Girl gestures towards these stakes however by no means totally engages with them. As a substitute, it settles for broad, universally digestible statements on fascism and oppression, ones that, whereas resonant, really feel too generalized to talk to the particular historic second it portrays.

In the end, Kiss of the Spider Girl is a movie about longing—for connection, for magnificence, for freedom—nevertheless it stays trapped in its personal shiny dreamscape. It has its moments visually, musically wealthy, and conceptually bold, however like its protagonist, it’s caught between fantasy and actuality, by no means fairly committing to both. Kiss of the Spider Girl screened on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. You will discover extra info right here.