Kiss of the Spider Woman: A Glittering Musical Triumph for Our Times

Bill Condon just delivered the movie musical we didn't know we desperately needed in 2025. Kiss of the Spider Woman is a glittering, gutsy triumph that takes the Broadway show and transforms it into something even more radical – a love story that dares to exist in our current political moment without apology or compromise.

Jennifer Lopez has been waiting her entire career for this role, and sweet Jesus, does she deliver. As Ingrid Luna, the movie star who exists in the fantasies of imprisoned window dresser Molina, Lopez channels Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, and Marilyn Monroe while making the role entirely her own. But this is Tonatiuh's movie, and the newcomer gives a performance for the ages as Molina, finding depths of humanity in a character that could've been a flamboyant caricature.

Set in 1983 Argentina during the Dirty War, the film follows Molina's imprisonment with Marxist revolutionary Valentín (Diego Luna, bringing hard-won wisdom to every glance). Molina has been sent to seduce information from Valentín, but instead, through elaborate retellings of his favorite movie musical, the two men find something neither expected – understanding, love, and revolution through seeing each other as human.

Condon stages the musical numbers with old-school MGM grandeur – full dance sequences shot in long takes without cuts, Technicolor-drenched fantasy sequences that transport us completely. But it's the intimate prison scenes between Tonatiuh and Luna that make this soar. Their chemistry crackles with tension, desire, and the gradual dismantling of prejudice.

The film premiered at Sundance to a standing ovation that left Lopez in tears, and rightfully so. This is musical filmmaking at its most ambitious and necessary. In a time when gender identity is under legislative attack, Kiss of the Spider Woman responds with art that's both defiant and devastatingly beautiful.