“These two people, in their confined environment, simply have to talk all the time,” Mr. Babenco said in an interview with The New York Times in 1984. “My task was to make it fresh and open, dynamic.”

He was successful. The film, made in an era when gay characters were rare onscreen, earned critical accolades for the actors, who agreed to forgo their salaries in exchange for a share of the film’s profits. Mr. Hurt won the Oscar for best actor, and Mr. Babenco was nominated for best director. “Kiss of the Spider Woman” was later a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, with music by John Kander and Fred Ebb and a book by Terrence McNally.

Mr. Babenco went on to direct the film adaptation of “Ironweed,” William Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set during the Depression. The movie, starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, was released in 1987.

Though those films established Mr. Babenco in Hollywood, he did not stray far from his roots. Many of his later films, like “Foolish Heart” (1998) and “Carandiru” (2003), hinted at his own passions or had personal meaning to him. “Pixote” (1981), his best-known film before “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” depicted the grim lives of boys growing up on the streets of São Paulo and was told through the eyes of a boy who encounters rape, blackmail and murder.