PARK CITY, UTAH Jan. 27 (UPI) — An emotional Jennifer Lopez joined co-star Tonatiuh and director Bill Condon on stage Sunday following the premiere of Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Sundance Film Festival. Condon adapted the 1992 stage musical based on the Manuel Puig novel, which was previously adapted as a 1985 film.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” Lopez said of her role. “The reason that I even wanted to be in this business was because my mom would sit me in front of the TV, West Side Story on Thanksgiving I remember. I was just mesmerized and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.'”
Lopez choked back tears as she shared how her goal was always to act in a movie musical. She began her career as a Fly Girl dancer on the sketch comedy show In Living Color, and has since starred in blockbuster movies like The Wedding Planner and Maid in Manhattan and enjoyed success as a singer.
“This is the first time I actually got to do it,” Lopez said, pointing to Condon and shouting for joy, “This man made my dream come true.”
Lopez also paid tribute to late actress Chita Rivera, who played her role in the stage production, playwright Terrence McNally, and lyricist Fred Ebb.
Kiss of the Spider Woman features Lopez as Ingrid Luna, the star of a fictional ’50s movie musical of the same name. The film is a favorite of Luis Molina (Tonatiuh), who is cell mates with political prisoner Valentin (Diego Luna) in 1983 Argentina. Molina tells Valentin the story of Kiss of the Spider Woman, and both Tonatiuh and Luna appear in the Spider Woman sequences.
Luna could not be at the premiere due to a family emergency.
Tonatiuh was also inspired by movie musicals, though a little later in life than Lopez. The actor, who uses he/they pronouns, attended the University of Southern California Film School and saw Singing in the Rain in an Introduction to Cinema class.
“Even after I graduated I would go back to that Wednesday class just to watch it one more time,” they said. “Seeing Gene Kelly and all the beautiful stars telling those stories, I always dreamed of being in a movie musical.”
Earlier in the evening, Condon introduced the screening by reading President Trump’s quote about his executive order on gender: “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.”
Tonitiuh’s character Molina is a gay man who wishes to be a woman. Condon added in his introduction that the movie had a different point of view than the Trump administration.
Elaborating after the screening, Condon said he considered rushing the film to release it around the November election. He also acknowledged that attacks on transgender and nonbinary identities predate the 2024 election, as the source material for Spider Woman dates back to 1976.
“Before that election happened, for years specifically trans people were being used as the latest victims the culture war,” Condon said. “To me, the promise of the movie is that somehow people can go beyond that and see each other as individuals.”
Condon also referred back to his own 2004 movie Kinsey, about human sexuality 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,” Condon said. “True liberation would be seeing someone as an individual and not as a label.”
Lopez said she also identified with the film’s themes of acceptance.
“Just seeing each other as human beings and how love can shorten the gap of any divide between people,” Lopez said. “You will find something in common with them and accept you are both human and you both have a heart.”
Tonatiuh recalled succumbing to real-life pressure to subdue his feminine characteristics by both family and the industry. The role of Molina allowed Tonatiuh to showcase extremes of masculine and feminine and the spectrum in between.
“No one can tell you who you are,” they said. “You get to decide that. Gender is simply a construct and it’s something that we play with and have fun with and get to explore.”
#Jennifer #Lopez #tears #Sundance #premiere #musical #Kiss #Spider #Woman
Leave a Reply