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Summary
Summary
Kiss of the Spider Woman is a graceful, intensely compelling novel about love and victimization. In an Argentine prison, two men share a cell: Molina, a gay window dresser who is self-centered, self-denigrating, yet charming as well; and Valentin, an articulate, fiercely dogmatic revolutionary haunted by memories of a woman he left for the cause. Both are gradually transformed by their guarded but growing friendship and by Molina's obsession with the fantasy and romance of the movies.
Author Notes
Author Manuel Puig was born in General Villegas, Argentina on December 28, 1932. Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (1968) is an innovative novel narrating through a variety of techniques the story of a young Argentine boy who lives vicariously through the movies. Puig uses the phenomenon of compulsive movie-going as a symbol for alienation and escape from reality. Heartbreak Tango (1969) evokes the spiritual emptiness of the Argentine provincial life in the 1930s and the vulgarity of popular music and the soap opera.
His best known work, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1979), was adapted as a film in 1985 and as a Broadway musical in 1993. He died of a heart attack on July 22, 1990.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Guardian Review
The spider as a potent symbol has reappeared in popular mythology throughout the ages. She is the cannibalising female who devours her partner after sex, the nurturing mother who feeds her young, the centre of the earth and, in male form, the superhero who saves New York from the Hobgoblin and Dr Octopus in Spiderman . The spider is seen as both passive, due to her connection with the moon, and aggressive as she sits and waits for her prey to fall into her trap. In India she is Maya, the eternal weaver of the web of illusion. The contradictions at the heart of the spider's symbolism fascinated the Argentinian writer Manuel Puig (1932-90), who placed it at the centre of his most famous work, Kiss of the Spider Woman . This story of the unlikely friendship between two cellmates - Valentin, a Marxist revolutionary, and Molina, a gay man who sees himself as a woman - has gone through several incarnations. The novel was published in Spain in 1974, having first been banned in the author's homeland. In 1985 the film version, starring William Hurt and Raul Julia, earned Hurt an Oscar and bought the tale to a wider audience. In the same year, Simon Callow and Mark Rylance appeared in an English translation of Puig's play at the Bush Theatre in London. Finally, in 1993, Kiss of the Spider Woman hit Broadway as a Kander and Ebb (of Cabaret fame) musical with Chita Rivera in the title role. The elusive Spider Woman of the title is in many ways the weaver of illusion - the writer himself. Puig was born in General Villegas, in the pampas of Argentina, in 1932. His father was a local businessman and his mother was a chemist and an avid movie-goer. This passion for films was something she shared with her youngest son and it brought them very close. Even in adulthood, Puig would set his evenings aside for his mother whenever he was in Argentina, so that they could catch up on the latest films his friends would post to him. The Argentinian film industry didn't excite them in the way that Hollywood did. Their taste was broad and populist: B movies, zombie flicks, musicals and rom-coms were all part of the repertoire. Their only criterion was that the movies offered them a form of escapism. These stories took Puig, a young gay man growing up in a repressive society, away from the reality of his situation and into a world of fantasy and imagination. He idolised Marlene Dietrich, Hedy Lamarr, Greta Garbo and flame-haired Rita Hayworth. And these stars became his spider women. He was fascinated by their allure, beauty and the power they exerted over men. They drew him into their fantastical worlds. In 1955, Puig gained a place at the prestigious Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome to study cinema. After graduation he had various jobs - as a language instructor, a waiter, a translator of subtitles, an assistant director (to, among other people, De Sica) and clerk for Air France. These jobs took him to Rome, London, Paris, back to Buenos Aires and then to New York, where he lived from 1963 to 1967. Puig's time on set had left him disenchanted with the movie industry. The early-morning starts, the painted backdrops and the stars without their makeup all served to destroy the illusion of glamour. He decided to abandon the idea of directing and instead become a screenwriter, so he could exert some level of control over the narrative. His first script was to be Betrayed by Rita Hayworth , about a young Argentinian called Toto who grows up enamoured of film (the autobiographical parallels are clear), but he never managed to write the screenplay. As his preparatory notes got longer and longer, he realised that he had written a novel without intending to. It was published in 1968 and was soon a bestseller. It was chosen by Le Monde as one of the best foreign novels of 1968- 69. The novelist Puig had been born. However, he never let go of his cinematic roots. When critics asked him to name his literary influences, he would cite von Sternberg and Hitchcock. I am currently directing the play of Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Rupert Evans and Will Keen. The story appealed to me because of the way it marries the personal with the political. I worked in prisons before I became a director, and the question of how a society treats its outcasts, and what that says about a society, continues to fascinate. The novel has been our starting point in rehearsal. It was Puig's fourth book and focuses on a six-month period in a prison in a Latin American country, whereas the play is more specific, locating it in the notorious Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires. Molina is serving an eight- month sentence for "corruption of minors" - an Argentinian euphemism for homosexual acts. His cellmate Valentin has been arrested, tortured and imprisoned without trial for his participation in a labour strike. To while away the time inside, Molina starts to share his memories of the films he has seen. The two men have markedly different world-views: the feminine Molina sees himself as a woman and longs to "live forever with a wonderful man"; the masculine Valentin rejects this idea as bourgeois, and dismisses human relationships as secondary to the cause. He berates Molina for escaping into a fantasy world, but fails to see that his reliance on the idea of the promised revolution is just as much of a fantasy. The novel is primarily written as dialogue, but also uses lengthy footnotes, official reports and stream-of-consciousness internal monologues. This experimental style rejects the use of a narrator, forcing the reader to take on this role. The dry and academic footnotes citing the latest psychological scholarship on homosexual behaviour (including one fictionalised report) are set in sharp contrast to the vibrant and complex character of Molina that they purport to explain. These footnotes have the effect of jolting readers out of the story so that they remain critically engaged. This essence has been retained in the play. Allan Baker, the translator of our play, spent two days with us at the beginning of rehearsals updating the script, clarifying narrative points and giving us an overview of the genesis of the play. Twinkly-eyed and with a touch of Molina about him, he told us of his friendship with Puig and their intentions behind the choices they made. They worked closely on the original 1985 English translation and wanted to remain true to the spirit of the novel by drawing an audience into the story's web without ever letting them get too comfortable. The play is interrupted by off-stage scenes, recorded voice-overs. Valentin constantly frustrates the audience by interrupting the tale that Molina is spinning, and Molina in turn leaves us hanging on his story so that we want to hear more. These dramatic devices have clear parallels with the theatre Brecht advocated, asking us always to step away from the action and question the injustice of the characters' situation. The dialogue form makes the reader work hard to "fill in the blanks", most effectively in the famous sex scene: - You're not cold taking your clothes off? - . . . - How good you look . . . - . . . - Ah . . . - Molina . . . - What? - Nothing . . . I'm not hurting you? - No . . . Ow yes, that way, yes In rehearsals, Will and Rupert have been working to "fill in the blanks" to give life to Molina and Valentin. Both characters have their private obsessions: films for Molina and Marxism for Valentin. Molina is obsessed with one film in particular: Cat People , a glorious 1942 Jacques Tourneur film starring Simone Simon as the conflicted panther woman. As he is forced to admit, Molina isn't always a reliable narrator: "There are some things I add to flesh it out." While Will has been delving into the films of the 1940s, Rupert has had the (perhaps less enviable) task of getting to grips with Marxist political theory. Every morning we find him sitting in the corner of the rehearsal room listening to his iPod and reading the works of Marx, Castro and, of course, the Argentinian-born Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who was so much of a hero to the young Valentins of the time. Valentin would most probably have been a member of the Montoneros, a guerrilla organisation that took its inspiration from the Cuban revolution to work outside the political sphere to effect change. The political turmoil and brutality of Argentina in the mid- 1970s provides the backdrop for our play. Guillermo Raffo, an Argentinian writer who was imprisoned by the regime, came into rehearsals to talk to us, and we have been reading reports, pamphlets and testimonies from that time. After Juan Peron's heart attack in 1974, his wife Isabel took over as president. To appease the military, she approved counterterrorist attacks and led a hard- right authoritarian regime. Against her late husband's wishes, she let herself be influenced by Lopez Rega, a sinister man who was known to the people of Argentina as "the witch" because of his belief in the occult. He directed the Alianza Argentina Anticomunista (AAA) against the "subversives" who challenged the government. Political activists were its first targets, but by the end of 1975 these included sympathisers within the university system and the media. The AAA conducted kidnappings, torture and assassinations with full state support. Valentin is one of their victims and has been imprisoned in Villa Devoto without trial. Molina professes not to engage with the political world, although he is also a victim of that society's oppression. Despite the seriousness of the world we're dealing with, there is great fun in the play, stemming from the apparent incongruity of these two men's friendship. Molina and Valentin learn from each other, and the message of the play is ultimately a life-affirming one. As the days have gone on, I've realised that Molina has in many ways taken over from Puig as the spider woman. He embodies so many of the contradictions at the heart of the spider's image - feminine, motherly and passive - but there is also a darker side to him that perhaps Molina himself doesn't want to acknowledge. Above all, Molina becomes the "eternal weaver of illusion" - and Valentin can't help himself from falling into that trap. Kiss of the Spider Woman , directed by Charlotte Westenra, is at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2 (0870 060 6624) from April 25 to May 26. Caption: article-spiderwoman.1 I am currently directing the play of Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Donmar Warehouse, starring Rupert Evans and Will Keen. The story appealed to me because of the way it marries the personal with the political. I worked in prisons before I became a director, and the question of how a society treats its outcasts, and what that says about a society, continues to fascinate. The novel has been our starting point in rehearsal. It was [Manuel Puig]'s fourth book and focuses on a six-month period in a prison in a Latin American country, whereas the play is more specific, locating it in the notorious Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires. [Molina] is serving an eight- month sentence for "corruption of minors" - an Argentinian euphemism for homosexual acts. His cellmate [Valentin] has been arrested, tortured and imprisoned without trial for his participation in a labour strike. To while away the time inside, Molina starts to share his memories of the films he has seen. The two men have markedly different world-views: the feminine Molina sees himself as a woman and longs to "live forever with a wonderful man"; the masculine Valentin rejects this idea as bourgeois, and dismisses human relationships as secondary to the cause. He berates Molina for escaping into a fantasy world, but fails to see that his reliance on the idea of the promised revolution is just as much of a fantasy. In rehearsals, Will and Rupert have been working to "fill in the blanks" to give life to Molina and Valentin. Both characters have their private obsessions: films for Molina and Marxism for Valentin. Molina is obsessed with one film in particular: Cat People , a glorious 1942 Jacques Tourneur film starring Simone Simon as the conflicted panther woman. As he is forced to admit, Molina isn't always a reliable narrator: "There are some things I add to flesh it out." While Will has been delving into the films of the 1940s, Rupert has had the (perhaps less enviable) task of getting to grips with Marxist political theory. Every morning we find him sitting in the corner of the rehearsal room listening to his iPod and reading the works of Marx, Castro and, of course, the Argentinian-born Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who was so much of a hero to the young Valentins of the time. Valentin would most probably have been a member of the Montoneros, a guerrilla organisation that took its inspiration from the Cuban revolution to work outside the political sphere to effect change. Despite the seriousness of the world we're dealing with, there is great fun in the play, stemming from the apparent incongruity of these two men's friendship. Molina and Valentin learn from each other, and the message of the play is ultimately a life-affirming one. As the days have gone on, I've realised that Molina has in many ways taken over from Puig as the spider woman. He embodies so many of the contradictions at the heart of the spider's image - feminine, motherly and passive - but there is also a darker side to him that perhaps Molina himself doesn't want to acknowledge. Above all, Molina becomes the "eternal weaver of illusion" - and Valentin can't help himself from falling into that trap. - Charlotte Westenra.
Kirkus Review
Two men--Valentin, a young Marxist held on political charges, and Molina, a 37-year-old window-dresser convicted of pederasty--share a Buenos Aires prison cell. Why? Because the warden assumes that Valentin will negligently spill information about his fellow revolutionaries to Molina, that Molina will then pass along this info; and Molina fosters the warden's assumption. But quite the opposite turns out to be the case: Molina in reality acts as Valentin's mother/protector, nursing him over terrible diarrhea caused by purposely-tainted food and feeding him instead from food packages gulled from the warden. Molina also entertains Valentin by telling about old films he's seen: voodoo cheapies, Nazi propaganda romances, trashy Mexican melodramas--a continuity that battles jail time, a soothing, ongoing ribbon of images that gives the book a satisfying meta-narrative quality. And in time, Valentin responds to Molina's kindness and lack of demands; the relationship grows organically, through benevolence and desperation, with a top crust of sentimentality that soon gives way to reveal Puig's real intent: the interlocking of Valentin's position as a victim of political repression with Molina's sexual persecution. All of this works, and the theme emerges just as it should, clearly but quietly. Why then did Puig feel the need to belabor this political/sexual parallel in a fussy, essay-like footnote that appears in pieces throughout the book, explicitly constructing a theory for gay liberation with references to Freud, Marcuse, and Dennis Altman? This eccentric, gifted writer should have trusted this book--and wise readers will trust it enough to ignore the footnotes--because it is his richest, least mannered work yet, especially well served by the spare tact of Thomas Colchie's translation. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
