There are few forms of escapism more time-honored and classic than the musical. This notion is baked into the plot of Kiss Of The Spider Woman, about two imprisoned men who endure the mental and physical distress of confinement by indulging in “glorious technicolor” fantasy. Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez) brings old cinema glamour to their theatrical dreams: “No matter how hard Hollywood tried to make her seem all-American, she never stopped being Latin,” Molina (Tonatiuh) proclaims passionately in the new trailer.
Molina is “a window dresser convicted of public indecency” who by chance shares a cell with political prisoner Valentín (Diego Luna). Their proximity potentially puts them at odds—Valentín has information that the guards want, and he suspects that Molina could be an informer. But it also draws them together, as each comforts the other through the horrors of imprisonment by “going to the movies.” And in Molina’s telling, the two men are in the movie, singing and dancing (perhaps even falling in love!) with Ingrid Luna herself.
Helmed by Bill Condon (director of Dreamgirls and screenwriter of Chicago), Kiss Of The Spider Woman had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where Lopez garnered a lot of buzz for her performance. (In her C+ review for The A.V. Club, Natalia Keogan praised the multihyphenate star, writing that she “imbues her character with a wonderfully calibrated theatricality.”) “I was waiting my whole life to be able to do a real big MGM Hollywood musical, and I finally got to do it,” Lopez told Variety in January. “It was more [than I hoped]. Me and Diego [Luna] were on set and we’re dancing around and we’re singing and looking at each other and it’s like we don’t want to do anything else but musicals. Diego said that! Me too. I don’t want to do anything else.” Kiss Of The Spider Woman opens in theaters October 10.
