Kiss of the Spider Woman

Adaptations of great books can fail with satisfying style: this one goesdown with all hands on deck dancing.

... a flaccid gabfest from beginning to end that manages to both undermine politics and trivialize art.

Argentine writer Manuel Puig's book Kiss of the Spider Woman has a theme that endures throughout all its various incarnations: that of human dignity and compassion surviving within a society that denies it.

By the end of the film, what started out as a contest between two opposite personalities has expanded into a choice between two completely different attitudes toward life.

The climax of the film is absolutely stunning; it has become the story of a young man whose very weakness drives him to heroic action, like a Graham Greene novel but kinky instead of sacred.

Kiss of the Spider Woman deftly shows how a gay man and a straight man can change each other's attitudes.

There’s a lot going on in Kiss of the Spider Woman, and though at bottom it is little more than a variant of two-guys-in-stir, it is so well made and ultimately so tender that it is likely to find a large American audience.

To understand its place in queer cinema history, and to understand what the world lost with the passing of Hurt and Julia, give it a watch. Prepare to get stuck in this spiderweb.

Juliá's character is terse and eruptive, simultaneously intrigued and hateful of his cellmate. The script, based on a novel by Manuel Puig, is full of wicked lines.