Kiss of the Spider-Woman, a Hollywood remake of a 1985 Brazilian film (in turn based on a 1976 Argentine novel), has just received its first non-teaser trailer. Now, I know we’ve all been up in arms for some years about Hollywood’s spate of pedestrian remakes, but to say that this doesn’t appear to be among those would be putting it very mildly. However closely (or not) it may follow its predecessor, I can honestly say that it doesn’t look like any movie made in the intervening four decades.
25% Prisoner Drama, 75% Musical Dream Sequence?
Kiss of the Spider-Woman stars Diego Luna and Tonatiuh as two cellmates in what certainly doesn’t appear to be a democratic installation. The trailer reveals that Luna’s character is still alive only because their captors want information. We get flashes of the torture that the guards inflict on him, presumably for interrogation purposes. “How much more of this can you endure?” asks the horrified Tonatiuh, whose own reason for imprisonment is unclear.
From this living hell, their minds have only one means of escape: “Why don’t we go to the movies?” Luna suggests. There’s one movie – and one actress – that Tonatiuh recalls most vividly: Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring “the great La Luna” (Jennifer Lopez, who disappears under the alternating aesthetics of a Marilyn Monroe-esque starlet and a beguiling Maleficent parody).
This, it seems, will be the setup for a lot of lavishly depicted fantasies involving La Luna, with both men variously inserted into her silver-screen settings. These elaborate daydreams take up well over half of the trailer’s visuals, and the prominence of singing and dancing numbers places Kiss of the Spider-Woman in the musical genre. A few brief clips within the grounded setting of the jail cell suggest that Tonatiuh’s character is also fond of playing the role of La Luna while acting out her scenes.
Oscar-Winning Talent Behind the Scenes
The writer-director of Kiss of the Spider-Woman is Bill Condon, whose previous credits include the two Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn movies, the 2017 Beauty and the Beast remake, and 1998’s Gods and Monsters, which earned him that year’s Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He was nominated in the same category for the screenplay of Chicago, the Best Picture-winning musical from 2002. Clearly, Condon has a penchant for both fantasy (fantastical romance in particular) and musicals; his pedigree is well-established for this unusual project.
The Great Unsolved Intrigue
The trailer does a masterful job painting a vivid portrait of Kiss of the Spider-Woman without spoiling the arc of its bizarre plot. What will be the culmination of Diego Luna’s and Tonatiuh’s horrific predicament? How will their fantasy-world refuge of La Luna figure into the progression of the “real” narrative? Is the clip of Tonatiuh fleeing down the street from cops a flashback or a scene from the climax? We must wait only a couple of months to find out.
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