Der Guardian veröffentlicht jede Woche eine kurze Beschreibung einer Adaption von Buch zu Film, wer die jeweiligen Autoren bzw. Regisseure sind und ob die Übernahme in ein anderes Medium geglückt ist. Alle bisherigen Adaptations of the week finden sich hier. Die aktuelle Beschreibung befasst sich mit Kiss of the Spider Woman:

How book and film compare: Though the film’s narrative generally sticks close to the novel it excises Puig’s lengthy footnotes about clinical assessments of homosexuality, and replaces Molina’s fetishisation of real movies with a single, fictitious Nazi-style piece, which is recreated at intervals throughout the story. Much of the detail of Molina’s lifestyle is lost in the adaptation, and the “spider woman” is presented as another of Molina’s films – whereas she appears in Puig’s original as the final image of Arregui’s own fantasy as he is tortured.

Inspirations and influences: As an evocation of high camp, Kiss of the Spider Woman brought gay cabaret style into mainstream movies, paving the way for American treatments of similar themes, such as Torch Song Trilogy (1988). It also marked a turning point for Latin American cinema, in the doldrums after the politically inspired cinema novo of the 1960s and 1970s.