Kiss of the Spider Woman, directed by Hector Babenco is a film adaptation of the book, written by Manuel Puig. According to Michael D. Klemm's review of the film, " ... the Nazi film, whose central theme of betrayal mirrors Molina and Valentin's situation, making Spider Woman a model of effective film adaptation." Klemm goes on to talk about how Molina's long monologues in the book made it easy to lose interest and therefore the films solution was to have the monologues come to life through small clips throughout the film. We will come back to these clips in a moment, but lets talk about the story and characters a bit. The film starts off with Luis Molina (William Hurt) retelling a film he saw long ago to his cellmate, Valentin Arregui (Raul Julia). Molina's recap of the film continues throughout the film, so in a sense its a film inside a film. What makes this film different than most is the characters. Molina is a homosexual who is imprisoned for corrupting a minor. Meanwhile Valentin is a journalist that is imprisoned for his political activities. As the film progresses, we see their relationship grow and towards the end, Valentin starts to treat Molina like a woman instead of a man. This leads me to the first big difference between this film and many others. This film focuses on how society treats and sees people that are homosexual. As the article from Yahoo Movies mentioned, " ... for Hurt's sensitive portrayal of a man whose sexuality makes him a criminal in society's eyes." As the film progresses, we start to question the old society standard of a male being a man and female being a woman. Even though Molina might look male, doesn't mean that he should have to act like one. Throughout the film we see Valentin get mad at Molina and his feminine side. This changes towards the middle, when Valentin is poisoned by the prison food and soils himself. "He feels humiliation, and then gratitude, as Molina cleans him up." From there, we see Valentin breaking down and showing off a side of him that isn't just anger and hate. In the end Valentin makes love to Molina, "his notions of what traditionally defines a man shattered forever." Now that we looked at the film's portrayal of genders and homosexuality and how this film challenged all that, lets go back to the Nazi film clips we get throughout the film. As the film progresses, we get small clips of the Nazi film that Molina watched and is now retelling. Skipping the first couple clips, lets move onto the parts where the Spider Woman (Sonia Braga) finds out that her lover, the Aryan officer, plans on executing some French people. When she confronts him about it, he takes her to the library and shows her a clip about why he does what he does. After seeing this, the Spider Woman immediately decides to help him, instead of helping the French resistance and getting the map. She gets in contact with the French resistance and ends up meeting with the leader. There she kills him and before escaping with her love, is shot in the back. (You can see this scene unfold in the video I will be providing down below). So now that we refreshed our minds about the Spider Woman, lets talk about why this is important to the story. I found this to be a good foreshadowing of what was to come for Molina and Valentin. In the Nazi film, the Spider Woman first is a spy for the French resistance, then she betrays them and becomes a double spy, only to end up dying in the end. The same can be said about Molina. Molina, as we find out, is working with the secret police and the warden to try and get information out of Valentin. This information would then be exchanged for an early parole. Though this may have been the original plan Molina had, it was not how it turned out. In the end Molina falls in love with Valentin and therefore refuses to tell the warden anything. This is compared to the Spider Woman's story, because at first she is sent to get the map, but after a dance and a couple days, she falls in love with the officer. Therefore she betrays the resistance, as Molina did with the warden. At the end, Molina is set free and promises Valentin that he will make the call. This leads to the films last couple minutes, where Molina is shot and killed. Meanwhile Valentin is back to being tortured and is given morphine by an orderly that is risking his job. Which leads to Valentin escaping into a fantasy, where Marta appears and they run out together. Overall this films biggest achievement was in its gender roles and society. As Hurt said, "We had to say something about not just gay rights, but about feminine and masculine relationships, and the nature or courage and what it means to speak truth to a power so much greater than you are." Not only did this film portray societies views on homosexuality, but it also showed how our standards are causing pain to those that don't fit in. It was interesting to see the changes in both characters. Valentin become less judgmental and cared for Molina as if he were a woman. Meanwhile Molina finally was able to live his life and died doing something he wanted. In the end, this film was a successful adaptation of the book as well as a successful way to impact the societies views.
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