Review of Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) by Kenneth L — 22 May 2013

This is, in some ways, one of the most unusual movies that you will ever see, and the fact that it was not only made in 1985 but actually won William Hurt a Best Actor Oscar at the time and got a Best Picture nomination is astonishing to me. It's a great movie, intelligent and playful and moving, but its subject matter is so very far outside of the 1980s mainstream that it seems impossible for it to exist. But it does.

Let me sum up the plot in one sentence that will make clear how unexpected this movie is: In Brazil in 1985, a flamboyant homosexual (Hurt), who has been jailed for having sex with a minor, regales his cellmate, a committed Marxist revolutionary (Raul Julia), with verbal recountings of his favorite movie, a 1940s romance that may or may not have been a Nazi propaganda film, while we in the audience see recreations of scenes from said movie. If someone tried to pitch this movie to a Hollywood executive today, can you even imagine how many red flags the preceding sentence would send up in that executive's mind?

The plot gets even more complex than that, but I don't want to spoil anything. William Hurt's performance is indeed extraordinary, and like nothing else you've seen before. It's a character who in many ways does play to gay stereotypes, but is never played for laughs and is instead taken completely seriously. It does seem a bit odd for the very white Hurt to be among the mostly Hispanic actors populating the rest of the movie, but then again maybe it's just one more way this character doesn't fit into his society. Raul Julia is also very good as the revolutionary, who for a long time seems to simply fit the stereotype of such revolutionaries, but eventually surprises us through his relationship with his cellmate.

The movie sets up an odd rhythm, as it bounces between Hurt's verbal retellings of the movie he loves, scenes actually showing that movie, political and philosophical discussions between the two characters, and moments of personal drama between them. It doesn't seem like it should all work together, but it does. The recreated scenes from the other movie are fun - they're shot in a sepia tone, with grandiose 1940s-style music and deliberately hammy acting. But it's obvious they have a serious relation to the rest of the movie, but it doesn't break down into any simplistic 1:1 correspondences.

Aside from the interludes from the movie-within-the-movie, the narrative and visual style of the movie is fairly straightforward and conventional. It's the particulars of the story being told, and in particular Hurt's excellent performance, that make the movie so weird and so memorable. It's like no other movie I can think of. I don't know how this movie happened, but I'm glad it did.