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Frida
**1/2
Cinema
Reviews - Week of March 28, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15.
USA/Canada. 123 minutes. Directed by Julie Taymor. Written by Diane Lake,
Gregory Nava, Clancy SigaL, Anna Thomas; based on "Frida: A Biography of
Frida Kahlo" by Hayden Herrera. Starring Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Valeria
Golino, Mía Maestro, Roger Rees, Diego Luna, Patricia Reyes
Spíndola, Margarita Sanz, Geoffrey Rush, Edward Norton, Ashley Judd,
Antonio Banderas.
"Frida" is a fine film -- except,
I don't mean "fine" in the way that wine lovers use the word, as if it's
exquisite, and I'm savouring it in muted but evocative terms. I mean that
it's okay, it plays just about fine and dandy, and that's about it. Movies
like this are a pain to write about; they're okay to watch, and you want
to do them justice, but they don't inspire much passion.
It's based on the life of Mexican artist Frida
Kahlo, who started painting in 1925 when recovering from a trolley car accident
that left her with permanent scars and a severe limp. (I thought she was
crippled through polio, but, um, I was wrong. Kahlo did suffer polio as a
child, though, something that goes curiously unmentioned in this film.) In
her 47 years, Kahlo got through an extraordinary amount of experience: From
her early twenties, she was married to the famous muralist Diego Rivera,
shared his passion for politics and was active in the Mexican Communist Party.
She achieved fame as an artist in both the United States and her home country.
And she had an affair with Trotsky, apparently.
Starring an Oscar-nominated Salma Hayek as Kahlo
and Alfred Molina as Rivera, "Frida" spends a lot of time covering the turbulent
marriage, at the start of which Diego promised that he could be loyal, but
not faithful. He screws a lot of young women and waxes lyrical about the
cause of the working man; she disapproves of the screwing around, while turning
her physical pain, and her fascination with traditional Mexican imagery,
into artwork. There's a nice dynamic between Hayek and Molina: He is, as
ever, one of the most fascinating of supporting players, with a presence
that can be roguish, warmly loving or downright crummy. And she, who often
bugs me with toneless delivery, is not bad here -- she was one of the producers
of the film, and I guess she had enough passion and history with the material
to instinctively understand how to play the character. Nothing about her
performance really stood out for me, but it plays.
The hidden purpose of all the film's emphasis
on the marriage is that it enables the screenplay to show Diego making necessary
connections in the art world, risking selling out by doing work for capitalists
like Rockerfeller and having all the problems with drink and egotistical
crises of character that artists tend to go through. Frida becomes known
through Diego's circles without having to get her hands dirty -- she benefits
from his self-promotion without having to sully her own artistic integrity.
Maybe this was the case in real life, where Rivera was the more prominent
artist, and Frida was sort of taken under his wing, but in a movie, you want
a little more detail about how Frida established herself, just to be sure
we're not watching a blind piece of hero worship.
It would be wrong to make too much of all that
-- the movie doesn't make Diego look like a bastard, or Frida a saint. I
have more of a problem with equal time being given to so many passages, which
drains emphasis from things as a whole. We never, for example, see the heroine's
rise to fame -- one minute Diego is telling her she should sell paintings,
the very next scene she is on the cover of Vogue. Frida Kahlo lived a remarkable
life, but "Frida" doesn't have as much charge as it should. As events happen,
we're taking in information rather than going through an
experience.
How the movie could be made much better, I can't
really say. The sound and visuals do right by the vibrancy of Mexican culture;
there's a strong, rich sense of colour in every frame, and I like the way
moments of music tend to be showcases for how Frida wows gatherings with
offhand shows of strength and flirtations with unexpected behaviour. Julie
Taymor, who became famous in the movie industry with her full-blooded Shakespeare
adaptation "Titus", has directed the picture artfully, and there are a lot
of striking transitions involving Hayek and Molina inhabiting the imagery
of their art. Some of this potentially impressive stuff feels like it was
self-consciously put there to be impressive, and the movie is maybe a little
too long. But mainly, you know, it's fine. Shrug.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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