Jennifer Lopez Tears Up, Bill Condon Gets Political at Electric ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ Sundance Debut
Oscar-winning Sundance Film Festival veteran Bill Condon returned to Park City to present the world premiere of his new movie musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman, at Eccles Center Theatre on Sunday night. When it was over and all the credits had rolled, his star Jennifer Lopez was moved to tears, the capacity crowd delivered two standing ovations and a star was born thanks to a revelatory turn from Tonatiuh.
Considering the pedigree of its filmmaker — Condon previously directed musicals Dreamgirls and Beauty and the Beast and wrote the Oscar-winning Chicago — and its global superstar who plays dual roles including the title character, Spider Woman was the most anticipated debut of Sundance this year. In his review, The Hollywood Reporter‘s chief film critic David Rooney calls it one of Lopez’s best roles of her decades-long career.
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Lopez, who skipped snow boots and sweaters for her festival debut, hit the Eccles in a glittering spiderweb gown by designer Valdrin Sahiti. It was a fitting choice, as Lopez’s performance echoed old Hollywood glamour and choreography that moved the audience to applause a handful of times after the film’s bigger musical numbers.
Spider Woman first started life as a 1976 novel by Argentinean author Manuel Puig, followed by a 1985 movie adaptation and finally a Tony-winning 1993 Broadway musical. The story focuses on two cellmates, Valentíno (Diego Luna), a political prisoner with hopes of overthrowing the dictatorship, and Molina (Tonatiuh), a queer window dresser convicted of public indecency. The two form a bond when, to pass the time, Molina recounts the plot of a Hollywood musical starring his favorite star, Ingrid Luna (Lopez).
The film, with its queer storyline and gender-fluid main character, lands at a fraught political time in the United States, just days after newly installed President Donald Trump delivered a strict, anti-trans proclamation about gender identity. Condon faced the news head-on as he offered introductory remarks before the first frame hit the big screen.
“One of the things the movie is about is the attempt to bridge the incredible, difficult differences that separate us so often. In that spirit, I’m going to read a line from a speech from earlier this week: As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female, as assigned at birth immutable,” Condon said to hisses from the audience.
Rousing applause followed when he offered this counter: “That’s a sentiment that the movie has a different point of view on. Personally, I think the most important thing is that somehow we have to bridge these differences, and there’s a sense in this movie — I hope you feel it — that the only way is going to be through kindness and love.”
The sentiment flowed through the post-screening Q&A, led by festival director Eugene Hernandez, and kicked off with the first of two standing ovations as Condon, Lopez and Tonatiuh made their way into the stage lights. “I’ll never forget this,” Condon said, later adding that Luna could not attend the Sundance screening due to a family emergency.
Same for Lopez. “I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” said the entertainer. “The truth is, when you talk about the importance of musicals, the reason that I even wanted to be in this business was because my mom would sit me in front of the TV when West Side Story would come on once a year, on Thanksgiving. I was just mesmerized. And I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do. That’s what I want to do.’ That was always my goal, and this is the first time that I actually got to do it.”
The opportunity made her think of Spider Woman alums Chita Rivera, Fred Ebb and Terrence McNally “and all of the love that they poured into this.” This iteration was produced by Barry Josephson, Tom Kirdahy and Greg Yolen from a script by Condon. The long list of executive producers includes Lopez and her producing partner Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon with their Artists Equity firm. Kiss of the Spider Woman is seeking distribution at the fest.
Hernandez then noted the revelatory performance of Tonatiuh, who also plays dual roles in the film. “What a way to get to know you,” offered Hernandez to cheers from the crowd. Tonatiuh, a USC film school grad, has previously been seen in Vida, Promised Land and the recent Netflix action hit Carry-On.
“[Professor] Drew Casper showed us Singing in the Rain, and he did it every semester,” recalled the actor of first falling for the genre. “I remember even after I graduated, I would go back to that Wednesday class just to watch it one more time. Seeing Gene Kelly and all those beautiful stars, all of those stories I always dreamed of being in a movie musical, and so here we are.”
Hernandez then circled the discussion back to Condon’s earlier comments about the U.S. government’s new proclamation. Condon, who presented his film Gods and Monsters at Sundance in 1998, said that there were discussions about whether or not this type of film should come out around an election. “Because it had been clear already before that election happened that for years, trans people were being used as a sort of the latest victims of the culture war,” he explained. “It did feel as if no matter what happened, this is something that we have to live with and it’s not going to go away. To me, the promise of the movie is that somehow people can grow beyond that and see each other as individuals.”
Condon then mentioned how he previously made the 2004 film Kinsey about famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey. “The most revolutionary idea he had was not the Kinsey scale, but that someone’s sexuality is as individual as a fingerprint. And that true liberation would be seeing someone as an individual and not as a label.”
Lopez continued the thought. “Love can kind of shorten the gap of any divide between people. We could just look at each other, as you’re saying, as individuals, as people, as human beings and not worry about who you like, who you don’t like, what your political beliefs are. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. There’s another human on the other side of you and you will find something in common with them. You are both human and you both have a heart. And that, to me, is something that was so important when I read the movie and why I wanted to be part of it.”
It was personal for Tonatiuh.
“Growing up as a femme, queer Latin kid in a culture that doesn’t necessarily praise those things, I remember when I was really young, I fought tooth and nail to be super feminine and put it in people’s faces. But I was told that my career would never achieve to the lengths that I wanted it to because of it. The thing that I fought so much to love about myself got stamped out of me in an industry that didn’t know how to handle duality. When I got this material, I knew this person spiritually. I understood someone who felt like a loser in their own mind and who found to be the hero of their own story by falling in love.”
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