Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
“Kiss of the Spider-Woman†– always thought it was some kind of cheap ‘’Spider-Man’’ spin-off movie when I was a kid. And having endured that other dire spin-off of the time, ‘’Supergirl’’, decided my money would be better spent on candy, comics or, er, ‘’Spaceballs’’. Probably best I did – as I wasn’t familiar with Peter Parker’s long-time enemy ‘Brazilian Homosexual’, so would’ve been lost at sea.
Many, many years later – so many, in fact, I’d forgiven the producers of ‘’Supergirl’’ so much I’d purchased a copy of it on DVD; glutton for punishment, hey!? – I discovered a film that didn’t feature William Hurt in tights or Sonia Braga coming in contact with a radioactive spider. Far from it, in fact.
Based on a novel of the same name, and directed by Hector Babenco, the flick tells of two guys in a Brazilian prison cell – Political prisoner Valentin Arregui (Raúl Juliá) and effeminate homosexual and statutory rapist Luis Molina (William Hurt). Molina helps Arregui pass the time by telling him stories – mainly recounting his memories of a war-time thriller that he loves. They make buddies. It’s later revealed that one of them is being poisoned so that he coughs up some information the authorities are beseeching.
Such a great movie – Julia (so pissed his last film had to be “Street Fighter†– nobody deserves to go out with a Van Damme movie) is amazing, but it’s Hurt who really astonishes. He won an Academy Award for his performance as the mysterious Molina, and has never been as good. The man truly swapped souls with a shady Brazilian prisoner for the duration of the shoot. Braga plays the woman in Molina’s stories – the lass in the films he’s telling Arregui about. I take it she’s not supposed to be that good in her scenes – being that she’s an actress in some crumby old Neo-Nazi flick – but she’s actually rather divine. Perfectly cast.
Extras
No commentary, but still, there’s a great lot of extras here – comprehensive documentaries on the making-of the film, as well as a trivia track.
