Frida is much more than a mere movie. It is a live-action painting, the inspired realization of an innovative vision that combines elements of evocative cinematography, vivid color and bizarre surrealism to create an artistic masterpiece.
Director Julie Taymor (Titus), who won a 1995 Tony award for her costumes on Broadway version of The Lion King and received a 1999 Oscar nomination for her costume design on Titus, once again uses weighty symbolism and an eclectic mix of fantasy and reality to bring Frida to life. Though Taymor's brief forays into various styles of animation and her occasionally disjointed editing detract from the audience's emotional connection to the movie, the beauty of her work overcomes many of Frida's shortcomings.
Frida is the life story of Mexican, Communist, bisexual, and crippled artist Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek). Kahlo, a carefree schoolgirl in Mexico City in 1922, is involved in a terrible trolley accident that scars her for life, destroying her back and eventually leading to the amputation of her foot. While in bed with a full body cast she teaches herself to paint, developing a bright, abstract style both surrealist and distinctly her own. Kahlo eventually marries fellow Communist artist and womanizing double divorcee Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). They struggle together to present their politically and emotionally charged artwork to a conservative world.
Much of Frida focuses on her unique and tumultuous relationship with Rivera. Though Rivera warns Kahlo when he proposes that he cannot stay faithful to her, she accepts him under the condition that he "remain loyal." Both Kahlo and Rivera engage in a veritable plethora of casual affairs throughout the movie with just about every acquaintance, male and female. Hayek presents an excellent portrayal of the conflicted Kahlo, who is caught between jealousy over her husbands many lovers and a deep, insuppressible love for him. Molina expertly transforms his character as he wavers between the heights of exultation and the depths of depression throughout the movie. Where inferior actors would have left Rivera as an unsympathetic cad, in Molina's hands he becomes simply and undeniably human.
Unfortunately, Frida trivializes the title character's relationships with other pivotal figures in her life, including her sister (Mia Maestro) and her father (Roger Rees). While the film gives some scant screen time to a fascinating friendship that develops between Kahlo and Rivera's ex-wife, Lupe (Valeria Golino), every other relationship Kahlo as is brief and sexual, and the film suffers. Kahlo doesn't evolve throughout the film as she should because she is confined to interacting with a few, isolated people in a similar manner.
Taymor use of the cinematic medium is positively spectacular. Kahlo's story is told through a series of her paintings that highlight the most dramatic episodes of her life, including a miscarriage and the amputation of her foot. With each painting, Taymor creates short animations using the artwork that blend perfectly with the live action, transitioning smoothly from reality to fantasy. The result is a poignant portrayal of Kahlo's emotional state. When Kahlo and Rivera visit New York City, Taymor incorporates a black and white collage of newspaper clippings, pictures, and video clips, mixed with splashes of vibrant color to show the hectic pace of life in the Big Apple.
The plot itself takes a back seat to Taymor's artistic expression. As a result, the story is disjointed and episodic. The movie goes from New York to Mexico City from year to year with little transition or continuity. "Frida" is also difficult to connect to personally, because the sheer violence of emotion and life Taymor loads into the film with the art sequences distances the audience from the characters. However, the creative brilliance of Frida and Taymor's radically different approach to the art of movie-making set this movie apart from the banal films that saturate today's theatres.
Frida is 118 minutes long and is rated R for nudity and mature themes.
Abigail Graber. Abigail Graber, according to various and sundry ill-conceived Internet surveys: She is: <ul><li>As smart as Miss America and smarter than Miss Washington, D.C., Miss Tennessee, Miss Massachusetts, and Miss New York</I> <li>A goddess of the wind</li> <li>An extremely low threat to the Bush administration</li> <li>Made … More »
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