t that might never take place in the outside world.
Considering this film from the standpoint of its intertextuality, it is apparent that the film aligns with several different genres, at least in some degree, and with various other kinds of text as well. The film clearly aligns with the class of literary adaptations to film, especially adaptations of dense works that would be considered difficult to translate into film terms. The film does seem to be seeking a way to visualize the written word, and this creates a certain tension outside of the actions and the characters themselves. The film can also be identified with the prison genre, gay film genre, the film noir style of the 1940s, and the political drama genre. The scenes of the Spider Woman singing in the cabaret refer back to the German films of Marlene Dietrich, though the era evoked is later, more likely the early 1940s than the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The way these genres mix and interact leaves only echoes of each genre, for the film does not fulfill directly and completely the expectations raised in the viewer by these different genres. The film alludes to a variety of film types and has a film-within-a-film structure, with the internal film referencing the genres of the war film and the film noir. However, it does so in a way that undercuts any memories the viewer might have of either, for these sequences are arch in style, overacted and often with characterizations that are over the top. After all, they are not recreations of the styles but rather memories of the character of Molina, reshaped by his own flair for the dramatic and for romance. A semiotic analysis of the internal film reminds the analyst of Hollywood productions with Maria Montez or some other exotic star, with the setting being not the real Latin America but an echo of the way Hollywood presents European cities during the war. It is also evident that this film connects to texts from the...