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Review: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
An interesting drama movie that is simple in plot but heavy in themes. A good watch.
Spoilers.
Story
The movie was about two prisoners, Luis Molina and Valentin Arregui. Molina was arrested for homosexual relations with a minor and Valentin was arrested for crimes related to his part in the political resistance. Molina was a romantic, and he would recount to Valentin a German propaganda movie that he found very romantic. Molina was a plant that the authorities were using to try to get more information about the resistance. But as Molina got to know Valentin, he fell in love with him and would try to protect him (by not telling the authorities what Valentin told him). Molina would also try to extend the time he got to spend with Valentin, but the authorities got fed up with his stalling and had him put on parole. Before he left, Molina confessed and Valentin returned his affection (though it was likely out of appreciation and kindness than actual love). Valentin asked Molina to pass on a message to the resistance; Molina was hesitant but he accepted in the end. He seemed to know that it was a danger to pass on the message so Molina made arrangements for his mother to be taken care of. When he met up with the resistance group, the police caught up and a gunfight resulted. Molina was shot by the resistance, who believed him a danger. The police tried to get Molina to give up the telephone number but he stayed silent and died. In prison, Valentin was heavily injured (probably due to torturing). He was given morphine where he dreamed about his love and it’s assumed that he died.
The story was simple, but I think the interesting part of this movie came from its parallels that were drawn with the stories that Molina told. They forced both Molina and Valentin to cope with their world and to be rid of their rigid worldviews. Valentin was a macho man who worked for the resistance but only through Molina’s stories did he open up about his feelings on love. Molina was a romantic but only in talking to Valentin did he understand the idea of political activism.
Production
The movie was very well acted by the two main characters who were very different, and yet found common ground to talk. I felt that Molina’s stories being fully acted also heavily encouraged the story within a story narrative so I really liked that.
Characters
Luis Molina
Molina was in prison for corruption of a minor. This wasn’t really clarified until later so for the biggest chunk of the movie I thought he was in prison for a general crime of homosexuality. So er, maybe don’t diddle kids Mister Molina. Nonetheless, as a character in the story, Molina was very likable. He clearly found a lot of comfort in the movies, even after Valentin pointed out it was Nazi propaganda (or maybe Molina already knew and chose to ignore it).
However, Molina’s flaw was that he refused to see flaws. He never acknowledged the Nazi part of the movie. He saw Gabriel as a perfect man, but Valentin insisted that Gabriel must have had flaws.
Before, Molina’s biggest problems in life were not being able to take care of his mother, and not being able to find a man. The latter, to Valentin, must have been very silly. In a way, maybe it was, but over the course of their friendship, Molina was able to get Valentin to open up, through talking about the characters or talking about themselves. But more about Valentin in his section. For Molina, he started to encounter trouble when he realized that he was truly falling in love with Valentin and he didn’t want to hurt him by outing the resistance. I only found out after I finished that this movie was set in Brazil, as the references to politics weren’t very recognizable to me. But it seemed that in Molina’s hesitance, even if it was due to his love for Valentin, he started to understand that there was honour and glory in fighting for a country, a movement.
Molina was overjoyed when Valentin was kind to return his affections. I think he knew that Valentin didn’t love him, and that he was doing it out of kindness and that was why he was so in bliss. And it was then that Molina agreed to pass on the message. But he realized that it wouldn’t be easy, but he would rather go out doing something important for someone he loved than to sit still and afraid for his entire life. Molina even went to see Gabriel one last time when he came back. Even though he had once been infatuated with Gabriel, he decided that what he set out to do was more important.
At first I thought Molina’s personal journey was a little weaker than Valentin’s because at the end it wasn’t clear if he did what he did for the resistance or for Valentin only. But maybe we can see it as a sign of Molina learning to be brave, and learning to find dignity for himself.
Valentin Arregui
Valentin was in prison for crimes related to the resistance. Again, I didn’t realize this movie was set in Brazil until after I finished so I wasn’t familiar with what the resistance stood for specifically. At first, Valentin was the kind of guy who would scoff at romance movies, and he scoffed even more when he realized that the movie was a Nazi propaganda film. But I think his conversations with Molina about the movie kind of opened up his brain to the idea of people being multi-faceted. Yes, the officer was evil, but someone out there loved him as a man. And that’s how things are in real life too. Sometimes bad people do good things and good people do bad things; very rarely do we find pure evil. And that’s not to say that it changes anything about Valentin’s goals, but it makes him reflect on himself as a complicated being.
When Valentin grew ill from the poisoning in the food, he let down his defenses and talked about Lydia and Marta, and how despite Lydia being at his side in the resistance, and Marta being part of the class he was meant to fight against, he always remembered Marta. And it was imperfect and it made him feel guilty because Marta was the enemy, but it was true.
Valentin was short with Molina sometimes, but he would apologize. I do agree with Molina that Valentin was kind even if he didn’t know it. And when Molina was to leave, Valentin spent the night with him which sent Molina over the moon. I don’t think Valentin was in love with him. Valentin’s heart would always be with Marta. But he wanted to do something nice for Molina and it was at little cost for Valentin. He didn’t find it emasculating to be sleeping with another man; rather, to him it was doing something that would make this friend very happy. And I can’t say whether Valentin is right or wrong because sex means something different for everyone.
Valentin asked Molina to pass on a message and Molina was really reluctant at first. But after some affection, Molina agreed. I don’t know if Valentin had purposely manipulated Molina, but clearly Molina thought about it afterwards, if he did draw all his money and make preparations.
Valentin seemed to have been tortured, probably in retaliation for the gunfight with the resistance. He was given morphine by the doctor and in his drug haze, Valentin dreamed that Marta came and took him to a beautiful beach where they’d run off into the sunset. And I guess we can interpret that as Valentin realizing that his love for Marta was always the most important thing to him. Logically, he knew the resistance was important, but instinctively he loved Marta. And that’s not right or wrong. We can’t control our emotions, we can only control the logical part of our brains and Valentin knew that the resistance was important. But his journey ended with him acknowledging the complexity and imperfection of his feelings and love.
Gabriel
Gabriel was a man that Molina was in love with. He was a busboy at a restaurant. After a year of visiting the restaurant they became friends. Gabriel had a wife and a family but Molina would fantasize about living with him as a couple did, though Molina never crossed that line. Molina fantasized about Gabriel to Valentin, but Valentin insisted that Gabriel wasn’t as perfect as Molina assumed. He probably had his own flaws, vices.
Leni
Leni was the main character of the romance movie that Molina was telling Valentin about. She was a French singer who was working for the resistance. She had a courtship with a German officer. After her friend (also working for the resistance) was killed, Leni had to take over her job and bring intel to the French forces. When Leni confronted the officer about the crimes of the German government, he showed her how the rest of the world lived and how Germany was doing good for everyone, and that won her over, gave her the peace of mind she needed to be in love with him. She brought the officer to the resistance officer but she was killed in an altercation when she refused his advances. Leni died in the arms of her love.
Molina related to Leni. He loved their grand romance. But Leni reflected a flaw that Molina would have to grow out of. For Leni, she refused to see deeper than the propaganda that the officer showed her, because she valued romance more than anything. But for Molina, through his conversations with Valentin, realized that there are things in life that are more important than love (humanity, survival).
Werner
Werner was the German officer in the movie that Molina was in love with. He thought he was soooo hot. And even though Valentin pointed out that he was a Nazi, Molina brushed it off. We don’t know what about Werner was attractive to Molina. Was it the uniform? Was it his stoicism? But the truth is, Werner was as unrealistic as can be. He was shown as potentially dangerous, but ultimately altruistic as his goals as part of the German government were portrayed as good. But even more than Gabriel, a perfect man does not exist in the way that Molina wants.
Michelle
Michelle was Leni’s friend. She too was in love with a German officer. She was conflicted and confided in Leni because she was pregnant with her lover’s baby. Before she could come to a conclusion, however, she was shot dead because of her betrayal.
When Molina got to this part of the movie, Valentin was distraught and he actually cried. We only realized afterwards that he probably related to this part of the story, two lovers on two sides of a political conflict, but their love being true and sincere. Marta had asked Valentin to back out from the resistance but he couldn’t and he left her. And he probably related to the idea of having to stay with your side until the very end.
Themes
Sexuality and Patriotism
Molina was a man more concerned with sexuality, who learned to understand the importance of politics in his life, and Valentin was a man whose whole life was politics and he learned to embrace and understand his sexuality and love.
Molina found Werner alluring, but Valentin pointed out blatantly that he was a Nazi officer. Molina also found Gabriel absolutely perfect, but Valentin was convinced that he had flaws or wasn’t as nice as Molina might have thought if he had gotten to know him better.
Molina said that he related to Leni, the singer in the movie, because he loved the idea of a grand romance. The fact that Werner was a Nazi didn’t mean much to him. But Molina posed the question to Valentin, of whom he related to more. Did he relate to Werner because he was a man, or did he relate to the French female singer who was part of the resistance? At the time this question was posed, we hadn’t learned of Leni’s eventual betrayal, but it was an interesting question to force Valentin to look at the ‘feminine’ aspects of his personality, such as his feelings.
Despite being a gay man, Molina implicitly trusted authority a lot more than Valentin did. He took on the deal to spy on Valentin, and when he got sick, he trusted that the doctors would take care of him. He tried to convince Valentin to go to the doctor when he got sick with the poisoning too, but Valentin could not risk it because he knew they would pump him full of drugs to get more information.
Story within a story
At the beginning, we were so immersed in Molina’s story that the actual background story for Molina and Valentin were almost second fiddle. But that’s how things are with Molina. He’s such a romantic, and his head was always in the clouds. He lived in fiction, and he used fantasy as an escape. While Valentin scoffed at his stories, he started to get caught up in them too, and he too started to find escape and comfort in the stories. And when he met his end, he learned from Molina to use his fantasies as a way to ease the pain.
Like Leni and Michelle, Molina also fell in love with the enemy. Only, his story didn’t turn out like theirs. While he did choose to side with the one he loved, he chose the difficult route to follow the resistance.
There was also a story about the spider woman that Molina covered very briefly at the end. The spider woman was a woman caught in her own web and she was played by the same woman who played Leni. She came upon a man on the beach, who I believe was played by the same actor as Valentin. She nursed him back to health and then she shed a single tear. I think that kind of represented Molina (who saw himself in Leni), coming upon Valentin and unlocking another part of his life, the one who felt brave enough to confront the reality of the world.
Overall
This movie took me by surprise. I enjoyed it by how much it was able to pack in such a limited story.
Spoilers.
Story
The movie was about two prisoners, Luis Molina and Valentin Arregui. Molina was arrested for homosexual relations with a minor and Valentin was arrested for crimes related to his part in the political resistance. Molina was a romantic, and he would recount to Valentin a German propaganda movie that he found very romantic. Molina was a plant that the authorities were using to try to get more information about the resistance. But as Molina got to know Valentin, he fell in love with him and would try to protect him (by not telling the authorities what Valentin told him). Molina would also try to extend the time he got to spend with Valentin, but the authorities got fed up with his stalling and had him put on parole. Before he left, Molina confessed and Valentin returned his affection (though it was likely out of appreciation and kindness than actual love). Valentin asked Molina to pass on a message to the resistance; Molina was hesitant but he accepted in the end. He seemed to know that it was a danger to pass on the message so Molina made arrangements for his mother to be taken care of. When he met up with the resistance group, the police caught up and a gunfight resulted. Molina was shot by the resistance, who believed him a danger. The police tried to get Molina to give up the telephone number but he stayed silent and died. In prison, Valentin was heavily injured (probably due to torturing). He was given morphine where he dreamed about his love and it’s assumed that he died.
The story was simple, but I think the interesting part of this movie came from its parallels that were drawn with the stories that Molina told. They forced both Molina and Valentin to cope with their world and to be rid of their rigid worldviews. Valentin was a macho man who worked for the resistance but only through Molina’s stories did he open up about his feelings on love. Molina was a romantic but only in talking to Valentin did he understand the idea of political activism.
Production
The movie was very well acted by the two main characters who were very different, and yet found common ground to talk. I felt that Molina’s stories being fully acted also heavily encouraged the story within a story narrative so I really liked that.
Characters
Luis Molina
Molina was in prison for corruption of a minor. This wasn’t really clarified until later so for the biggest chunk of the movie I thought he was in prison for a general crime of homosexuality. So er, maybe don’t diddle kids Mister Molina. Nonetheless, as a character in the story, Molina was very likable. He clearly found a lot of comfort in the movies, even after Valentin pointed out it was Nazi propaganda (or maybe Molina already knew and chose to ignore it).
However, Molina’s flaw was that he refused to see flaws. He never acknowledged the Nazi part of the movie. He saw Gabriel as a perfect man, but Valentin insisted that Gabriel must have had flaws.
Before, Molina’s biggest problems in life were not being able to take care of his mother, and not being able to find a man. The latter, to Valentin, must have been very silly. In a way, maybe it was, but over the course of their friendship, Molina was able to get Valentin to open up, through talking about the characters or talking about themselves. But more about Valentin in his section. For Molina, he started to encounter trouble when he realized that he was truly falling in love with Valentin and he didn’t want to hurt him by outing the resistance. I only found out after I finished that this movie was set in Brazil, as the references to politics weren’t very recognizable to me. But it seemed that in Molina’s hesitance, even if it was due to his love for Valentin, he started to understand that there was honour and glory in fighting for a country, a movement.
Molina was overjoyed when Valentin was kind to return his affections. I think he knew that Valentin didn’t love him, and that he was doing it out of kindness and that was why he was so in bliss. And it was then that Molina agreed to pass on the message. But he realized that it wouldn’t be easy, but he would rather go out doing something important for someone he loved than to sit still and afraid for his entire life. Molina even went to see Gabriel one last time when he came back. Even though he had once been infatuated with Gabriel, he decided that what he set out to do was more important.
At first I thought Molina’s personal journey was a little weaker than Valentin’s because at the end it wasn’t clear if he did what he did for the resistance or for Valentin only. But maybe we can see it as a sign of Molina learning to be brave, and learning to find dignity for himself.
Valentin Arregui
Valentin was in prison for crimes related to the resistance. Again, I didn’t realize this movie was set in Brazil until after I finished so I wasn’t familiar with what the resistance stood for specifically. At first, Valentin was the kind of guy who would scoff at romance movies, and he scoffed even more when he realized that the movie was a Nazi propaganda film. But I think his conversations with Molina about the movie kind of opened up his brain to the idea of people being multi-faceted. Yes, the officer was evil, but someone out there loved him as a man. And that’s how things are in real life too. Sometimes bad people do good things and good people do bad things; very rarely do we find pure evil. And that’s not to say that it changes anything about Valentin’s goals, but it makes him reflect on himself as a complicated being.
When Valentin grew ill from the poisoning in the food, he let down his defenses and talked about Lydia and Marta, and how despite Lydia being at his side in the resistance, and Marta being part of the class he was meant to fight against, he always remembered Marta. And it was imperfect and it made him feel guilty because Marta was the enemy, but it was true.
Valentin was short with Molina sometimes, but he would apologize. I do agree with Molina that Valentin was kind even if he didn’t know it. And when Molina was to leave, Valentin spent the night with him which sent Molina over the moon. I don’t think Valentin was in love with him. Valentin’s heart would always be with Marta. But he wanted to do something nice for Molina and it was at little cost for Valentin. He didn’t find it emasculating to be sleeping with another man; rather, to him it was doing something that would make this friend very happy. And I can’t say whether Valentin is right or wrong because sex means something different for everyone.
Valentin asked Molina to pass on a message and Molina was really reluctant at first. But after some affection, Molina agreed. I don’t know if Valentin had purposely manipulated Molina, but clearly Molina thought about it afterwards, if he did draw all his money and make preparations.
Valentin seemed to have been tortured, probably in retaliation for the gunfight with the resistance. He was given morphine by the doctor and in his drug haze, Valentin dreamed that Marta came and took him to a beautiful beach where they’d run off into the sunset. And I guess we can interpret that as Valentin realizing that his love for Marta was always the most important thing to him. Logically, he knew the resistance was important, but instinctively he loved Marta. And that’s not right or wrong. We can’t control our emotions, we can only control the logical part of our brains and Valentin knew that the resistance was important. But his journey ended with him acknowledging the complexity and imperfection of his feelings and love.
Gabriel
Gabriel was a man that Molina was in love with. He was a busboy at a restaurant. After a year of visiting the restaurant they became friends. Gabriel had a wife and a family but Molina would fantasize about living with him as a couple did, though Molina never crossed that line. Molina fantasized about Gabriel to Valentin, but Valentin insisted that Gabriel wasn’t as perfect as Molina assumed. He probably had his own flaws, vices.
Leni
Leni was the main character of the romance movie that Molina was telling Valentin about. She was a French singer who was working for the resistance. She had a courtship with a German officer. After her friend (also working for the resistance) was killed, Leni had to take over her job and bring intel to the French forces. When Leni confronted the officer about the crimes of the German government, he showed her how the rest of the world lived and how Germany was doing good for everyone, and that won her over, gave her the peace of mind she needed to be in love with him. She brought the officer to the resistance officer but she was killed in an altercation when she refused his advances. Leni died in the arms of her love.
Molina related to Leni. He loved their grand romance. But Leni reflected a flaw that Molina would have to grow out of. For Leni, she refused to see deeper than the propaganda that the officer showed her, because she valued romance more than anything. But for Molina, through his conversations with Valentin, realized that there are things in life that are more important than love (humanity, survival).
Werner
Werner was the German officer in the movie that Molina was in love with. He thought he was soooo hot. And even though Valentin pointed out that he was a Nazi, Molina brushed it off. We don’t know what about Werner was attractive to Molina. Was it the uniform? Was it his stoicism? But the truth is, Werner was as unrealistic as can be. He was shown as potentially dangerous, but ultimately altruistic as his goals as part of the German government were portrayed as good. But even more than Gabriel, a perfect man does not exist in the way that Molina wants.
Michelle
Michelle was Leni’s friend. She too was in love with a German officer. She was conflicted and confided in Leni because she was pregnant with her lover’s baby. Before she could come to a conclusion, however, she was shot dead because of her betrayal.
When Molina got to this part of the movie, Valentin was distraught and he actually cried. We only realized afterwards that he probably related to this part of the story, two lovers on two sides of a political conflict, but their love being true and sincere. Marta had asked Valentin to back out from the resistance but he couldn’t and he left her. And he probably related to the idea of having to stay with your side until the very end.
Themes
Sexuality and Patriotism
Molina was a man more concerned with sexuality, who learned to understand the importance of politics in his life, and Valentin was a man whose whole life was politics and he learned to embrace and understand his sexuality and love.
Molina found Werner alluring, but Valentin pointed out blatantly that he was a Nazi officer. Molina also found Gabriel absolutely perfect, but Valentin was convinced that he had flaws or wasn’t as nice as Molina might have thought if he had gotten to know him better.
Molina said that he related to Leni, the singer in the movie, because he loved the idea of a grand romance. The fact that Werner was a Nazi didn’t mean much to him. But Molina posed the question to Valentin, of whom he related to more. Did he relate to Werner because he was a man, or did he relate to the French female singer who was part of the resistance? At the time this question was posed, we hadn’t learned of Leni’s eventual betrayal, but it was an interesting question to force Valentin to look at the ‘feminine’ aspects of his personality, such as his feelings.
Despite being a gay man, Molina implicitly trusted authority a lot more than Valentin did. He took on the deal to spy on Valentin, and when he got sick, he trusted that the doctors would take care of him. He tried to convince Valentin to go to the doctor when he got sick with the poisoning too, but Valentin could not risk it because he knew they would pump him full of drugs to get more information.
Story within a story
At the beginning, we were so immersed in Molina’s story that the actual background story for Molina and Valentin were almost second fiddle. But that’s how things are with Molina. He’s such a romantic, and his head was always in the clouds. He lived in fiction, and he used fantasy as an escape. While Valentin scoffed at his stories, he started to get caught up in them too, and he too started to find escape and comfort in the stories. And when he met his end, he learned from Molina to use his fantasies as a way to ease the pain.
Like Leni and Michelle, Molina also fell in love with the enemy. Only, his story didn’t turn out like theirs. While he did choose to side with the one he loved, he chose the difficult route to follow the resistance.
There was also a story about the spider woman that Molina covered very briefly at the end. The spider woman was a woman caught in her own web and she was played by the same woman who played Leni. She came upon a man on the beach, who I believe was played by the same actor as Valentin. She nursed him back to health and then she shed a single tear. I think that kind of represented Molina (who saw himself in Leni), coming upon Valentin and unlocking another part of his life, the one who felt brave enough to confront the reality of the world.
Overall
This movie took me by surprise. I enjoyed it by how much it was able to pack in such a limited story.