Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) on Netflix
Valentin Arregui, a journalist imprisoned for his politics, shares a cell with Luis Molina, a window dresser jailed on morals charges. Molina passes the time retelling a wartime romance.
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- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
Brazil is under a military dictatorship, and Valentin Arregui is held in one of its prisons, a journalist who worked with a leftist revolutionary group and has been tortured for information he has not given. He has been separated from his lover, Marta. His cellmate is Luis Molina, a gay window dresser convicted of corrupting an underage youth, who says he has no political affiliations. Molina talks his way through the nights by describing a wartime romance he admires, a story produced in Germany as Nazi propaganda, using it to distract and soothe Valentin. Valentin dislikes the film's origins but listens anyway, and the two men, who disagree about politics and about movies, begin to look out for each other.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 1981 director Héctor Babenco was in Los Angeles to accept an award for Pixote, and at the reception Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas asked about his future projects; Babenco mentioned wanting to adapt Puig's novel starring Burt Lancaster, who was at the event, and Thomas introduced them.
- Press rumors about Lancaster, a Babenco statement to a French gay tabloid that was published out of context, the actor's advancing age and a heart bypass operation in April 1983 delayed the production, and the filmmakers turned to William Hurt as a replacement.
- Puig biographer Suzanne Jill Levine identified the film within the film as a compilation of Third Reich productions with Paris Underground and Die große Liebe, the 1942 picture starring Zarah Leander, who was the model for Leni Lamaison, a character named after propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
- Richard Gere was set to play Valentin, giving the production further box-office credibility, but Babenco remained wary of anglicizing the source material and was relieved by the casting of Puerto Rican actor Raul Julia in his place.
- Hurt and Julia agreed to work for the Screen Actors Guild pay scale and deferred the greater part of their salaries for a profit share in the sale of the film's distribution rights, as well as its box-office gross.
- During filming in Brazil, William Hurt and a friend were threatened at gunpoint and were not let go until several hours later.
- The expected $1.5 million budget was financed in part by Brazil's Embrafilme, which bought Brazilian distribution rights for $160,000, and rehearsals took place in a São Paulo prison that had been vacated in the wake of riots.
