If [the] insistent use of unedited dialogue tends to make ["Kiss of the Spider Woman"] read a bit like a radio script …, it is Mr. Puig's fascination with old movies that largely provides its substance and ultimately defines its plot, its shape. What we hear are the voices of two suffering men, alone and often in the dark, but what we see are panther women and zombies, exquisite Nazi heroines and radical racing drivers, exotic settings (a lot of finely perceived detail, especially about fashion) and fabulous metamorphoses, all the iconographic imagery, magic and romance of the movies.

Not that there's anything very innovative about the way this is accomplished. The homosexual is simply an old movie buff who entertains his young, somewhat unimaginative cellmate—especially after lights-out, as a kind of lullaby, and later to get the student's mind off his agony when the police are weakening...