These days Oscars means less than they used to, in a time when results of race for golden statues could, on certain occasions, be described as “groundbreaking”. One of such example is given by Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985 drama directed by Hector Babenco, film known as the first independent production to be nominated for Best Picture and the first to receive Best Actor Award for the portrayal of openly gay man.
The plot is based on the eponymous novel by Argentine writer Manuel Puig and set in Brazil during the military dictatorship. The protagonist, played by William Hurt, is Luis Molina, effeminate gay window dresser who got received prison sentence for “corrupting the minor”. He is sharing cell with Valentin Arregui (played by Raul Julia), former journalist and radical leftist revolutionary who was tortured by secret police. Molina tries to deal with hardships of prison life by escaping into the world of fantasy, recreating films that he watched or imagined long time ago and retelling them to his cellmate. One of them includes Her Real Glory, Nazi WW2 propaganda film set in occupied France whose protagonist Leni Lamaison (played by Sonia Braga) is singer in love with German officer. Valentin, who still believes in revolution and takes more stoic approach to his suffering, is at first revolted with those fantasies but, gradually, two very different men learn to trust and care for each other. Valentin is, however, unaware that Molina didn’t get to his cell by accident and that he was promised freedom in exchange for extracting information about Valentine’s underground network.
It could be argued that Kiss of the Spider Woman is a political film and that Academy, by nominating and rewarding this film, sent implicit political message, expressing its displeasure with policies of US President Ronald Reagan whose administration supported various right-wing dictatorships in Latin America very much like the one depicted in the film. The Oscar for William Hurt could have also been interpreted as expression of support for gay community in the first years of AIDS. Regardless of whether politics played part or not, William Hurt’s award was well-deserved. Hurt, straight WASP actor who is now specialised mainly for boring and conventional characters, here delivered encountered the most demanding role of his career and delivered great performance. Hurt has invested an incredible amount of effort in his role, which included visiting gay bars in Sao Paulo and carefully studying mannerisms and appearance in order to make his portrayal of Brazilian gay man as authentic as possible. He also spent months meticulously preparing his scenes with Raul Julia, another great actor who also delivers memorable performance. Brazilian actress Sonia Braga is also great in complex triple role of Leni Lamaison, Spider Woman from another of Molina’s fantasies and Valentin’s former girlfriend Martha.
Efforts of the cast are aided by those of Brazilian director Hector Babenco. Despite lack of language skills and creative differences with Hurt, he delivered great job, especially in the scenes feature “film within film”, carefully reconstructing the style and melodrama of 1940s classics. He also worked very hard to make the general style and structure of the film as close to Puig’s novel as possible, but this effort wasn’t completely successful. The last part of the film, that deals with Molina’s life outside the prison, is slightly overlong and features some elements of Puig’s novel (mainly the official secret police reports that serve as substitute narration) which could have been introduced earlier. Kiss of the Spider Woman is nevertheless a very good film that deserves recommendation even for audience who doesn’t care much for themes that were supposed to be groundbreaking decades ago.
RATING: 7/10 (++)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/11703-kiss-of-the-spider-woman Critic: AA
