One Paragraph Movie Review: Kiss of the Spider Woman

Two hundred and ninetieth film: Kiss of the Spider Woman, a film from 1985 that watches like a play, with eighty percent of the action occurring in conversations between Raul Julia playing a political prisoner and William Hurt playing a gay man in a single jail cell. Vastly more interesting than two blokes talking should be, this zips through bits like love, betrayal, sexuality, politics, and Nazism with uncharacteristic candour for the mid-80s, peppered with Hurt’s descriptions of his favourite film that’s as full of obvious parallels as it is swastikas. I saw this in the 80s and remember it as being one of the most straightforward, calm depictions of gayness I’d seen, and it still holds up pretty well. Gorgeous. Sad. With a bit of diarrhoea. Spoiler: there’s not a lot of spider woman in it, but there’s a little bit of kissing. Four and a half cling-wrapped roast chickens out of five.