Daily Archives: January 26, 2025

‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman’ Review: Bill Condon’s Film Version Brilliantly Reinvents Broadway Musical And Finally Gives Jennifer Lopez The Role She Was Born To Play – Sundance Film Festival

There can be no question the Broadway musicals of John Kander and Fred Ebb have been charmed when it comes to movie adaptations. Bob Fosse’s 1972 film reinvention of Cabaret won eight Oscars. Director Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon‘s cinematic interpretation of Chicago in 2002 is still the last musical to win the Best Picture Oscar. Both made the musical format work, even for those who hate movie musicals, by integrating the songs so they don’t collide with the narrative but seamlessly fit in with it. (Ironically for Kander and Ebb their 1977 original movie musical New York, New York directed by Martin Scorsese was less successful, as was its recent stage incarnation.)

It’s nice to report that the stunning new film adaptation of their 1993 Tony-winning musical, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, joins Cabaret and Chicago as a master class in how to find the cinematic soul of a Broadway musical while still doing it justice on screen 30 years later — and in a very different time culturally.

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Actually this journey started with the 1976 novel by Argentinian writer Manuel Puig, and then the 1985 film version that was nominated for Best Picture and won William Hurt the Best Actor Oscar. With this 2025 screen incarnation of the Kander/Ebb show, director and screenwriter Bill Condon has gone back to Puig’s novel to realize its original intent as a love story that’s now being able to be told without restraint and a key part to the tale’s emotional power and truth for contemporary audiences.

The story centers on a gay window dresser named Luis Molina (remarkable newcomer Tonatiuh), picked up by the military-run 1983 Argentinian government on a morals charge and thrown into a prison cell with a Marxist revolutionary named Valentin Arregui Paz (Diego Luna). There is a promise of leniency if Molina can pry some much desired information out of him.

To pass the time Molina tells an initially skeptical Valentin the story of a movie musical starring Ingrid Luna, the huge star he is obsessed with. As the time goes by the story of the film, and the love story within, eventually merges with the harsh reality of their incarceration. The technicolored fantasy of a Hollywood musical morphs into a torturous political nightmare, and a most movingly a true human connection between these two men.

That would be the bones of what Condon is working with here and in lesser hands it could be a dicey proposition if the audience is not compelled to buy both parts of it. To do this, Condon made a key change from the book and musical where Molina was basically either telling the story of his love for the star, or ruminating on her many different films. Here Condon has created a single movie musical, Kiss Of The Spider Woman, in which Ingrid as her character Aurora is caught in the feathery plot between two men, Kendall Nesbit and Armando, before also becoming the title character. In essence the director has shot a gritty prison drama combined with an all glam and grand technicolor of an MGM musical from the ’40s and ’50s. It’s an inspired change and gives this take even more of a reason to exist as a piece of cinema, not just one transferred from stage to screen. To work, we have to become invested in both, and thanks in no small part to this extraordinarily talented cast, we are.

To pull this off Condon had to jettison some of the show’s songs, mostly those in prison, but the loss is more than made up for — and in fact enhanced — by the dazzling movie musical on view with some 11 production numbers where it is Lopez, Lopez, Lopez who has the whole package — singing, dancing, acting — she has never gotten the opportunity to show on screen in this way. Lopez has always been underrated for her chops as a dramatic actress, but fans of the period and the films emulated here will see favorable comparisons with Columbia musical icon Rita Hayworth, MGM diva Cyd Charisse, Ava Gardner, even Marilyn Monroe in the delicious “Gimme Love” number (choreographed by Christopher Scott) where Aurora is surrounded by male dancers ala Marilyn in “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend.” Although many of these movies were saddled with silly plots and dialogue, Condon gets to make his musical homage with one dynamite number after another. Slowly, the tone becomes darker with the eventual title song, and it is chillingly delivered with a sense of foreboding ala Joel Grey’s M.C. in Cabaret. The message seems to be that the fantasy world of a Hollywood soundstage is no match for the real world and whims of a dictator.

Luna is not only gut-wrenching as political torture victim Valentin, but also doubles as a suave musical star when he’s playing Armando opposite Lopez, showing off his multi-faceted talents. Breakout discovery Tonatiuh shows why he got the part after a worldwide search. Equally adept at the musical requirements doubling as Nesbit, he is heartbreakingly good as a movie-mad young gay man living in his fantasy world in a repressed society, but also finding love where he least expected it and against all odds.

Cinematographer Tobias Schliessler is saddled with the challenge of not just to recreating the candy-colored brightness of MGM confection, but also the muted color and bleakness of an Argentinian prison. No easy task, but superbly achieved. I almost thought it might be nice to see the prison scenes in pure black and white, but I think the contrast would come off as too obvious. The smart decision was made here. Scott Chambliss’ fine production design, along with the eye-popping costume design — especially for Lopez — by Colleen Atwood and Christine Cantella are tops, as is Brian A. Kate’s sharp editing. Shout out to choreographer Sergio Trujullo and co-choreographer Brandon Bieber for those sparkling dance numbers.

After a year filled with intriguing musicals from Wicked to Emilia Perez, Bill Condon carries on the tradition of a genre he has mastered before on a larger scale with Dreamgirls, Beauty And The Beast, and screenwriter on Chicago, now demonstrating it is still fresh and alive and relevant even on the budget of independent filmmaking. Premiering tonight at the Sundance Film Festival where he last appeared in 1998 with his Oscar-winning Gods And Monsters, the Sundance bookending of two very different gay stories bound by their common humanity seems more significant than ever.

Kiss Of The Spider Woman is appropriately dedicated to late lyricist Fred Ebb, late playwright Terrence McNally, and late original Broadway star Chita Rivera.

Producers are Barry Josephson, Tom Kirdahy, and Greg Yolen. Artists Equity and Mohari Media are presenters with the former’s Ben Affleck and Matt Damon among Executive Producers including Lopez, Luna, and Condon among many others. It takes a village to get an inide movie made these days.

Title: Kiss Of The Spider Woman

Festival: Sundance (Premieres)

Sales Agents: CAA and WME

Director/Screenplay: Bill Condon

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, Tonatiuh, Bruno Bichir, Josefina Scaglione, Aline Mayagoitia

Running Time: 2 hours and 8 minutes

Touch Me Director & Cast Talk Japanese Pink Film Influences & More

Posted in: Exclusive, Film Festival, Horror, Interview, Movies, Sundance | Tagged: Addison Heimann, Jordan Gavaris, Lou Taylor Pucci, Marlene Forte, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Touch MeTouch Me director Addison Heimann and stars Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris, and Marlene Forte discuss thriller.Published Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:48:08 -0600 by Tom Chang | Article Summary
Director Addison Heimann explores deep emotions in the psychosexual horror-comedy “Touch Me”.
“Touch Me” is inspired by “The Untamed”, with themes of mental illness and friendship.
Olivia Taylor Dudley and Lou Taylor Pucci connect deeply with their characters’ personal struggles.
Jordan Gavaris and Marlene Forte bring empathy to roles, reflecting Heimann’s personal experiences.
Sometimes, some of the deepest, darkest regions of the mind can produce some of the most impressive visuals, not to mention act as a form of therapeutic subterfuge as is the case for writer-director Addison Heimann’s (Hypochondriac) works with his latest in Touch Me. The psychosexual horror-comedy follows two co-dependent friends, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Craig (Jordan Gavaris), as they battle their insecurities and toxicity when Joey’s ex, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), resurfaces. Brian is an alien who can use his touch to take away someone’s anxiety and depression in a moment of euphoria. While promoting the film at the Sundance Film Festival, Heimann, Dudley, Gavaris, Pucci, and co-star Marlene Forte spoke to Bleeding Cool about Heimann’s inspiration for the film and how his writing resonated with the cast.Cr: Glowing Tree Films/Rustic Films
Touch Me Director & Cast on Film’s Empathy
Bleeding Cool: Addison, what’s the inspiration behind ‘Touch Me?’
Heimann: All my ideas came out of beautiful and sad depression, and I was dealing with a sorrowful time with a friendship breakup at the time. And I was miserable. I watched a movie called ‘The Untamed’ (2016), which was about an alien who was in a shack that fucks people and gives them euphoric touch. I was like, “I want to feel that. I wish I could if I could find that in my life.”
I had been recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, so I was like, “What would that look like? How could I marry that beautiful thought process with what I was going through? I’ve been learning Japanese for five years and became obsessed with Japanese cinema of the 60s and 70s, Pink films, like ‘Lady Snowblood’ (1973), ‘House’ (1977), ‘Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion’ (1972), and ‘Sex & Fury’ (1973). They had such a beautiful theatricality with incredibly saturated color built on these theatrical sets. I was like, “This is my way,” and so I created this world with this alien who has this hip-hop dancing and wears tracksuits, but at the core, it’s the story of a friendship break up and two broken people living with their mental illnesses, who ultimately need to learn to overcome it.
Olivia and Lou. Did you both build a backstory for your characters in addition to what Addison had established in the script for your characters?
Dudley: With Joey, I shouldn’t have to build too much of a backstory. I read the script, and I immediately related to her. We have so much in common. We both have OCD and anxiety and have spent a lot of time around narcissists. I’ve been in codependent relationships and had so much to pull from my personal life, which doesn’t always happen with characters. There was such a rich world already inside me that I felt like Joey, and I didn’t build that much of a backstory with her. I also didn’t have much prep time on this, so it was more scouring my mind and soul of “Who is she” versus writing down what her favorite music is or something like that. I made Joey myself.
Pucci: It’s more about the connection we had on screen in the present than the backstory because our backstory was we had this massive two-week experience where I thought I fell in love with how surface-hot you were and couldn’t ever get over it. For five years, you ran away from me because I almost exploded your head with my tentacles.
The question also goes to Jordan and Marlene. Do you guys have any notes for your ‘Touch Me’ characters aside from Addison’s script?
Gavaris: I was last into the casting process, the last piece. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. The one thing I knew, despite the creative and colorful allegories and wild circumstances of the movie, this was at its heart, a personal story for Addison based on real things that had happened to him. I knew to an extent [my character] Craig was his shadow avatar, so it’s not obvious who Addison is as a person, but maybe some of the deep fears we have of who we could be or how we’re seen by other people, which also goes to the heart of OCD and intrusive thoughts.
At least I had Addison as a resource because otherwise, I didn’t have the time; Addison believed in Olivia so much and was so confident in the process by his belief, believed in myself, and that I was going to do it properly. What was tricky with Craig, more than anything, was knowing you must love this guy. Otherwise, the end of the movie doesn’t work, and his arc as a character doesn’t work; despite him being a narcissistic mess at times, you do have to love him. I kept that in the back of my mind the whole time, and humor’s always a great access point for me in terms of making sure that the characters…I hate these words, but stay “likable” or “relatable.” I was lucky in the way that I thought too much was happening, and it was happening too fast. I didn’t have time to think.
Forte: Addison scripts dialog and the worlds he creates are so easily absorbed that…this is the second time I have worked with him. They’re so relatable and human, and like Olivia said, “Joey is me.” That’s in some weird way. Both these characters are me, whether this is a genre so I can get crazy in my inner voice and smash somebody’s head into the bed, which we all think about doing in certain moments in life but don’t. We answer politely, but with his characters, we can just do it, especially with [my character] Laura, who I think is the monster in this script.
Touch Me, which also stars Paget Brewster, premieres at the Sundance Festival on January 28th and runs through February 2nd.
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