KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN B
Brazil USA (120 mi)
1985 d: Hector Babenco
This business of being
a man, it doesn’t give any special rights to anyone.
―Valentin (Raúl Juliá)
From the director of PIXOTE (1981), a searingly realist
street drama of homeless youth and rampant criminal activity as seen through
the eyes of a ten-year old caught up in a Darwinian dog-eat-dog world around
him, this film is adapted from Argentine novelist Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel by
the same name (initially published in Spain, as it was banned in his home
country), reflective of the repressive military regimes in Argentina from the
60’s and 70’s, including the Dirty War when 30,000 citizens were rounded up and jailed
for supposedly subversive acts against the state, tortured and held without
trials, only to disappear without a trace.
Growing up as a gay man in Buenos Aires, Puig recounts there was an
authoritarian and repressive atmosphere in his town, developing a habit of
viewing movies with his mother in the local cinema, mostly B-movies or
westerns, where he always viewed the townspeople as the villains, not the
heroes, where movies served as an escape from his forbidden reality of being
gay. Today, Argentina is among the more
advanced countries around the world in advancing gay rights, but that was only
after a return to democracy in 1983.
Prior to that, military dictatorships went on cleansing sprees in an
attempt to arrest and eradicate gays from public visibility, directly attacking
gay community members prior to the World Cup in 1978, followed by another round
of paramilitary attacks in 1982. This
political mood, and the revolutionary activism following the Cuban Revolution
which led to a rising Marxist labor movement in South America is at the heart
of the film, serving as the backdrop, much like the depiction of the Stasi
government in East Germany, with government agents spying upon targeted
citizens. As Babenco is an
Argentine-born Brazilian director with a propensity for social realism, he
seems like the perfect fit to transport the novel to the screen, his first film
in English, yet this is surprisingly Hollywood-oriented, featuring major stars,
where controversy surrounds this film in the casting choice of William Hurt as
Molina, playing a flamboyantly gay drag queen imprisoned for child molestation
(a unique choice for a protagonist, not seen since), yet he’s clearly the star,
while his cellmate is Raúl Juliá as Valentin, a Marxist revolutionary political
prisoner who is a target of repeated interrogation sessions of torture designed
to identify his activist group. Set
almost entirely within the four walls of their prison cell, these two are an
unlikely duo, with completely different goals and ideas in life, with Molina,
safely tucked into a corner lined with photographs of glamorous Hollywood movie
stars, searching for the perfect man he can take care of while Valentin wants
to overthrow the fascist government. The
fatalistic symbol of the spider ensnaring its prey along with a prevailing
theme of entrappment are felt throughout, yet this is, at core, a love story,
with both representing cultural stereotypes, their confinement in prison
reflecting the government repression of homosexuality and Marxism.
The mythology surrounding cinema is a key component to this
film, considering the pain and isolation of prison confinement, with Molina helping
pass the time by telling the story of a movie from his past, an expressionist
fantasy from the golden age of Hollywood in the 30’s and 40’s, not one anyone’s
ever heard of, but one that made an impression on him, so he loves telling it
in his own way. While the book recounts
half a dozen movies, some vividly recognizable, the film condenses them all
into one movie, becoming a movie-within-a-movie, with Babenco describing his
film as “an exercise in lying in two styles.”
Weaving emotional illusion into their existing reality, with Valentin,
weak and still bleeding profusely from brutal beatings, finding the stories
utterly reprehensible bourgeois crap, particularly when he realizes it’s
actually a heavily romanticized Nazi propaganda flick, an imagined UFA film
shot in a sepia tone featuring wildly over-the-top acting, yet Molina’s heart
flutters at the thought of the sexy Vichy-era French chanteuse, Leni (Sônia
Braga), who he loves to describe, with a decadent, jazz-inspired underground
flavor of Paris coming across as well, luridly pitting the head of Nazi
counterintelligence (Herson Capri), against the buffoonish French
Resistance. Meant to resemble Zarah
Leander, an UFA star during the war who became a gay icon, where one should
point out that the song she sings is echoed later in the film when it is sung
by a drag queen before a gay following.
Valentin initially rejects it as middle-class escapism, also rejecting
small comforts, like food, believing he must maintain strict discipline to keep
from breaking down during the interrogation sessions. So when they are served disproportionate
meals, one significantly larger than the other, he insists upon taking the
smaller portion. When Molina gets
drastically sick afterwards, the best way Valentin can offer moral support is
to allow him to continue telling his movie, as a means to distract him from the
pain. When he’s sent to the infirmary,
however, we realize the food was poisoned with Valentin as the target. The warden is using Molina to get information
from Valentin, suddenly altering the playing field, with both characters viewed
differently afterwards. Dominating the
screen time, viewers initially share in Molina’s dilemma, likely put-off
initially by his exaggerated mannerisms, though over time he becomes more
sympathetic, with the audience overlooking his crimes, viewing him more
humanely, as his emotions are displayed for all to see, and while he’s overly
self-centered, he’s also caring and considerate. When the poisoned food finally hits its target,
Valentin is overcome with shame, refusing medical treatment, embarrassed and
humiliated by a wretched case of diarrhea, though Molina is more than helpful
in cleaning him up, which establishes a trust that wasn’t there before. The increasing misery of each character from
the cyclical illness only accentuates the embellishments in the movie, like an
antidote, intensifying a growing romance onscreen, with Molina, spinning his
web of illusion, falling in love with Valentin, who can’t help falling into his
trap. These parallels are measured
contrasts that attempt to lure the audience into their private worlds, suddenly
more open with one another, with darker forces remaining in the background.
Puig was not happy with Hurt’s performance, claiming “La Hurt
is so bad she will probably win an Oscar,” which, of course is exactly what
happened, the first man to win Best Actor for playing a homosexual, as
Hollywood loves to reward itself, even in its most grotesque depictions of
exaggeration and camp, but Cannes awarded him Best Actor as well. Through the passage of time, he seems
terribly miscast in the role, feeling forced and pretentious, an opportunity
missed for a gay actor, yet he likely helped increase the box office success of
the film (increasing book sales as well).
The provocative nature of the film starts to wear thin in the final
portion, particularly the relationship with Molina and the warden, with Molina
feigning visits from his mother, returning with shopping bags filled with
goodies, where suddenly the two prisoners are dining like kings. One wonders what happened to that
revolutionary discipline of Valentin, as suddenly he’s a softie, compromising
at every turn, no longer a man on a mission fighting for his cause. It all gets muddled by the luxuriated
surfaces of the Nazi movie, which thoroughly transfixes Molina, clueless to the
original intent, failing to understand its true implications, leaving him lost
in a no man’s land, as if stranded on a desert island. So he comes across on a completely different
wavelength in the prison cell, waving treats and bonbons at Valentin, where his
offered culinary delights are no answer to Valentin’s rage and anger in
witnessing the horrid treatment of fellow prisoners. This barbaric human condition, mirrored by
the Nazi’s, gets lost in the lurid storytelling of Molina’s imagination (with
Braga playing three different roles), which dwarfs and overwhelms Valentin’s
political views, with reality taking a back seat by the end of the film, though
Babenco tries to integrate them together, each taking on characteristics of the
other. Perhaps reflecting the futility
of Marxist politicization in both Argentina, Brazil, and across South America,
Valentin, much like the Communist Party itself, failed to comprehend the
subversive quality of Molina’s exclusion from the status quo, as both are
oppressed outcasts. Yet the Party failed
to give a voice to exiled and persecuted gays, offering them no sanctuary,
instead they were caught up in the same inflammatory machismo rhetoric that got
them nowhere, even as both were seeking the same human value, freedom and
dignity. With so much of this film
caught up in delusional fantasy, any connection to real life becomes secondary,
yet Valentin’s opinion of Molina changes drastically, eliminating accusations
of being called a “faggot,” instead viewing him as a man with dignity, even
willing to make love to him, with a shared kiss shattering any notion of what
traditionally defines a man. But the
sexual union comes across as an afterthought, as the world in 1985 was not yet
ready for that, embroiled in an AIDS epidemic with people dying by the
thousands, seemingly with no recourse, with Rock Hudson becoming the first
high-profile fatality that very same year.
Viewed as a queer milestone, filled with nostalgia and melodramatic
excess, recalling Fassbinder’s LILI MARLENE (1981), the film is like a time
capsule pastiche in honor of an era gone by, an homage to the glory years of
Hollywood, a time when gays could fantasize about love and romance without
compromise, yet the devastating reality of AIDS laid waste to that colorful gay
fantasia, suffering a major setback, with gays disappearing from the mainstream
for nearly a decade, their absence filled by Pedro Almodóvar, where this film
is like a mirage in the desert, where freedom is only available through death
or illusion.
