Kiss of the Spider Woman

––a European woman, a bright woman, […] a woman with a knowledge of Marxism, […] an attractive woman, a woman who won’t be shaken by the news of someone else’s demise, […] a woman who refuses to accompany her lover on a trip back to the jungle coffee region, a woman who goes right back to the daily routine of a busy Parisian executive, a woman who nonetheless finds it difficult to forget true love, a woman who knows what she wants, a woman who has no regrets about her final decision, a dangerous woman, a woman who is capable of quickly forgetting, a woman with the power to forget what would have only become a burden, a woman who could even forget the death of a fellow who returns to his own country, a fellow who’s flying back to his own country […]

––Anyway, I don’t know…it seems like we were destined to be separated.

––Because you loved each other too much?

––That sounds like another bolero, Molina.

––Listen, big man, don’t you know by now, boleros contain tremendous truths, which is why I like them.

––The healthy thing about her, though, was the way she stood up to me. We had a genuine relationship going for us. She never just…how can I explain it? She never let herself be manipulated, like, the typical female.

––…Inside, I’m all raw, and only someone like you could really understand…because you were raised in a clean and comfortable house like me and taught to enjoy life, and I’m the same way. I can’t adjust to being a martyr, it infuriates me, I don’t want to be a martyr, and right now I wonder if the whole thing hasn’t been one terrible mistake on my part….They tortured me, but […] I didn’t even know the real names of my comrades, so I only confessed combat names […] but inside myself there seems to be another kind of torturer…and for days he hasn’t let up…And it’s because I seem to be asking for some kind of justice. Look how absurd what I’m about to say is: I'm asking for some kind of justice, for some providence to intervene…because I don’t deserve to just rot forever in this cell […].

––He asks her if she’s happy inside this gilded cage. […] Then she tells him the truth, how, exhausted by the terrible ordeal of the theater, where she’d managed to climb to the very pinnacle, she let herself be taken in by a man she thought was decent. […] She soon got bored with just doing nothing all the time and asked him to allow her to return to acting, but he refused. Then the reporter tells her he’s ready to do anything for her […] and then kisses her. She throws her arms around him, for a minute letting herself be carried away by an impulse, and says, I need you…But then he asks her to go away with him. And she’s too afraid to do it.

––Such an enigmatic ending, isn’t it, Valentin?

––No, it’s right, it’s the best part of the film. […] It means that even if she’s left with nothing, she’s content to have had at least one real relationship in her life, even if it’s over and done with.

––But don’t you suffer even more, after having been so happy but then winding up with nothing?

––Molina, there’s one thing to keep in mind. In a man’s life, which may be short and may be long, everything is temporary. Nothing is forever. […] It’s a question of learning to accept things as they come, and to appreciate the good that happens to you, even if it doesn’t last. Because nothing is forever.

––Yes, it’s easy to say. But feeling it is something else.

[…] there’s no point in being so sad because the only one who knows for sure is him, if he was sad or happy to die that way, sacrificing himself for a just cause, because he’s the only one who will ever have known, and let’s hope, Marta, how much I wish it with all my heart, let’s hope that he may have died happily, “For a just cause? hmmm... I think he let himself be killed because that way he could die like some heroine in a movie, and none of that business about a just cause,” that’s something only he can know, and it’s possible that even he never knew, but in my cell I can’t sleep anymore because he got me used to listening to him tell films every night, like lullabies […]

[…] she can’t move, there in the deepest part of the jungle she’s trapped in a spider’s web, or no, the spiderweb is growing out of her own body […] so many threads that look hairy like ropes and disgust me, even though if I were to touch them they might feel as smooth as who knows what […] she’s crying, or no, she isn’t, she’s smiling but a tear rolls out from beneath the mask, […] and I ask her why she’s crying and in a close-up […] she answers me that that’s just what can never be known, because the ending is enigmatic, and I answer her that it’s good this way, that it’s the very best part of the film because it signifies... and at that point she didn’t let me go on, she said that I wanted to find an explanation for everything […]