One More Kiss

I remember watching Kiss of the Spider Woman in college almost 20 years ago. Even then I was mesmerized by the images although I never understood many of the sub plots or contexts for the film. The funny thing was that unlike other films this one was never available on DVD, so I could not revisit it. Therefore all that remained were the images in a distant memory.

Watching the film again last week two things were reinforced. One is still impressed how the project was completed given its unique, non mainstream narrative and the second is the coming together of the various talents who made the story believable.

Almost 70 percent of the film is set in a jail and by the time one of the protagonists steps out, you are almost relieved that the ordeal is over. Over a discussion post the film screening, the producer of the film mentioned that the film took almost a year to edit. Whatever the explanation, this feeling of isolation is beautifully captured and you feel what the characters feel trapped in a prison cell.

There is also the film within a film where one of the characters is either telling stories that he remembers from films he has seen or is making them up. This is very similar to stories that inmates tell each other to pass time. However here the "films" have another significance. In these "films" the characters are more black and white - the vulnerable woman, the strong man - something that apparently the writer of the novel (on which the book is based) uses to explain homosexuality.

While the film offers a critique of the dictatorial regimes it does not go overboard with its argument or resort to propaganda. Instead it looks at the nuances of being forced to live in a situation that may be beyond your control. The homosexual is an outsider both in the dictatorship or the socialist regime that the rebels are trying to set up. In fact most of us would be a misfit in any system that takes ideologies to the extreme. The film is in sharp contrast to something like Persepolis which simply assumes that everything that happens in Iran post the Islamic Revolution is bad. In this sense the film does not glorify a personal story of suffering and use it to criticize the society.

What places the film above many others on such subjects (persecution, repression, homosexuality) is the use of the film medium combining them with dreams and reality. Very few films use cinema as a part of their narrative. A character may refer to a film or a character from a film but images from a film are only shown when the characters are in a hall. The Kiss of the Spider Woman leaves us with many questions. What is reality? What is a dream? And what is a film? A projection of reality? Or our fantasies?