Jennifer Lopez long ago established herself as a triple-threat performer. But “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” which hits theaters Friday, marks the first time she felt like the star of an old Hollywood musical like the ones she watched as a kid growing up in the Bronx.
“It was like the stuff that dreams are made of,” Lopez told reporters in a virtual news conference Sunday. “I got to sing, I got to dance, I got to act. I got to play like a big Hollywood movie star.”
In a tale retold several times over the past decades, the new “Kiss of the Spider Woman” movie musical adaptation has a star-studded cast that includes Lopez and Diego Luna, as well as breakout star Tonatiuh.
The story centers on Marxist revolutionary and political prisoner Valentín Arregui (Diego Luna) as he shares a cell with Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), a gay window dresser who defies gender norms and is convicted of public indecency in early 1980s Argentina, during the country's seven-year military dictatorship. In prison, Molina uses his imagination to retreat into the comfort of his favorite movie, starring fictitious silver screen diva Ingrid Luna (Jennifer Lopez, to get through the horrors of Argentina’s repressive regime. That creates an unlikely opportunity for love and acceptance between the two very different cellmates.
"They rip joy and beauty from the most darkest of places," Tonatiuh told NBC News.
Luna told NBC News that with "so many brutal examples of dictatorships in Latin America,” it wasn't hard for to understand the historical context that effectively informed his captivating performance in the film.
But Luna, the successful Mexican actor known to many TV and film fans from his starring roles on Star Wars’ “Andor” and Netflix’s “Narcos: Mexico,” enjoyed returning to his theater roots the most. “This film to me is a homage to theater,” he said, “how much film was theater back then.”
Reimagining a timeless tale
“Kiss of the Spider Woman” remains a timeless tale about how escapism can often serve as a survival mechanism — turning moments of joy, even if they are rooted in fantasy, into a tool to cope with the chaotic forces designed to wear people down during times of hardship and political turmoil.
“We are talking about how film and pop culture can be an escape but also a mirror,” Luna said, “a mirror that helps you transit reality.”
Director and screenwriter Bill Condon told NBC News that "is very much the essence of the story," going right back to the first time it was told by the late acclaimed Argentine author Manuel Puig in the 1976 novel of the same name.
Puig's book was adapted into a stage play in 1983. Two years later, it became an Oscar-nominated film starring Hollywood greats William Hurt, the late Raúl Juliá and Sonia Braga. In 1993, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was turned into a Tony-winning musical, starring Broadway icon Chita Rivera.
Condon created his newest adaptation by blending the novel's grittiness and its extravagant Broadway adaptation, effectively taking audiences on a journey between reality and fantasy.
Condon's urgency to introduce "Kiss of the Spider Woman" to a new generation of viewers was so powerful that he took a leap of faith and wrote the film on spec, with no guarantee that it would get made.
"I just thought it had to be done," Condon said. "I really wanted to make it in a pure way. I thought it was the only way to do it."
For Lopez, the story of “Kiss of the Spider Woman” will continue to stand the test of time.
"I feel like the story and the message is not done yet. It needed to be told again, to this generation. We need to remind people of the humanity of these communities," she said. "It’s a story that I think will keep being told until everybody gets on board with the fact that we’re all just people."
Introducing a new star
As Lopez brought her own style to the character Rivera originated on Broadway, Tonatiuh was stepping into the role of Molina, which earned Hurt an Oscar for best actor in the 1985 film adaptation.
While they were on the film set, Lopez told Tonatiuh that she saw his dynamic performance in the movie as his "Selena moment," in reference to Lopez's own breakout role in the 1997 biopic of the late Tejano music star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez.
"This moment is making me feel like I’m ready to cry," Tonatiuh told NBC News when asked about the sweet moment. "I just feel so grateful."
Previously seen in Starz's "Vida" and Netflix's "Carry-On" and now one of Variety's "10 Actors to Watch," Tonatiuh, a Los Angeles native of Mexican American heritage, said having the opportunity "to champion stories that represent the different communities that I’m a part of just feels like a gift."
In "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Tonatiuh plays a character who embodies "the totality of the gender spectrum" in a film that centers the dignity of Latino and the LGBTQIA communities, he said.
"Oftentimes people in marginalized communities get conditioned as children to think that they’re not worthy and they internalize this narrative," Tonatiuh said. "Molina, despite all the horrors that happen to them, says, 'I refuse to look at that and to be anything other than happy.'"
