Jennifer Lopez attends the “Kiss of the Spider Woman” premiere during the Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Center Theater on Jan. 26, 2025, in Park City, Utah.

PARK CITY, UTAH — “The Spider Woman is sitting right there,” said filmmaker Bill Condon, calling Jennifer Lopez to the stage of the Eccles Theater for a Q&A after the Sundance premiere of his newest musical. As she walked toward the director in a sparkling spider web-patterned dress, the crowd stood to its feet and roared.

“Kiss of the Spider Woman” was arguably the biggest movie at this year’s festival, and a special return for director Condon, who debuted “Gods and Monsters” in Park City in 1998 before going on to direct blockbusters like “Dreamgirls” and “Beauty and the Beast.”

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The source material has had many permutations over the years, beginning as a 1976 novel that was then transformed into a campy film in 1985 and a Broadway musical in 1993. In this iteration, the plot is framed around a pair of prisoners in an Argentina jail cell. Diego Luna plays Valentin Arregui, a revolutionary figure being slowly tortured for information. His cellmate, Luis Molina, played by Tonatiuh, has been imprisoned for her sexuality and is being used by the warden as an informant (Molina identifies as a woman but faces pushback from other characters who refer to her with male pronouns).

To ease Arregui’s suffering, Molina tells him bedtime stories explaining the plot of their favorite film, “Kiss of the Spider Woman.” As the film-within-a-film unfolds, Molina and Arregui get into deep........

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