Directed by Héctor Babenco • 1985 • United States, Brazil
Starring William Hurt, Raúl Juliá, Sônia Braga
Featuring indelible performances from Raul Julia and an Academy Award–winning William Hurt, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN is a work of radical compassion that boldly expands notions of love, gender, and revolution. In the film—directed by Héctor Babenco following his international breakthrough with PIXOTE, and adapted from the novel by the iconoclastic writer Manuel Puig—Julia and Hurt play Valentin and Molina, a militant leftist activist and a queer, cinema-obsessed window dresser, imprisoned together under a repressive military dictatorship. The two gradually forge a bond that transforms the way they both understand politics, sexuality, and masculinity. Blending raw realism with Molina’s imaginative escapes into sumptuous movie fantasy, this searing human drama offers a powerful vision of personal liberation embedded within broader political struggle.
Up Next in LGBTQ+ Favorites
-
Poison
Directed by Todd Haynes • 1991 • United States
Starring Edith Meeks, Larry Maxwell, Susan NormanInspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes’s debut feature deftly interweaves a trio of transgressive tales—“Hero,” “Horror,” and “Homo”—that build towards a devastating climax. “Hero,” shot...
-
Benjamin Smoke
Directed by Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen • 2000 • United States
Far from a standard music documentary, Jem Cohen and Peter Sillen’s loving portrait of underground musician Benjamin Smoke—speed freak, drag queen, and a true outsider artist in every sense of the word—captures his singular personalit...
-
Totally F***ed Up
Directed by Gregg Araki • 1993 • United States
Starring James Duval, Roko Belic, Susan BehshidA delirious mix of punk nihilism and deadpan irony, the first film in Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy puts an audaciously queer spin on Jean-Luc Godard’s classic MASCULIN FÉMININ. Across fifteen ...
