Dir.
Julie Taymor, 2002, US/Canada, 123 mins
Cast:
Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Valeria Golino, Geoffrey Rush, Mia Maestro, Roger Rees, Diego Luna
Frida Kahlo's greatest masterpiece was herself. Iconic, exotic, tragic, uninhibited, committed, passionate, her work never art for arts sake. For Frida, her paintings really were the medium for her to explore and express herself, ensnaring the viewer as a gestalt therapist, forcing them to be both integral and redundant to her work. A lover of movies - Edward G. Robinson was a buyer, and in the film there is a sequence in which Frida is portrayed as Fay Wray to her husband's King Kong - it seems most natural, a self-conscious gift, that Frida should have lead the sort of life that lends itself to a movie: tragic tram accident that left her paralysed but which through sheer determination overcame; a love affair, marriage, divorce and remarriage to Mexico's leading post-modern artist, Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), an unconventional lifestyle, a strong presence on the political scene, and a lover of Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush). The most unbelievable aspect is that it's taken nearly half a century for the story of her life to be brought to the screen.
Director Julie Taymor says of Frida, "She has said that her paintings were her reality - that they tell the truth as thoroughly experienced." Taymor has rightly embraced this and presents the film as both a retelling of the artist's life but also a work of "art" in itself. In the opening shots, in which the bed-bound Frida is carried through the streets to her first exhibition in her own native Mexico, there is a downward shot of her head placed within the frame of her makeshift bed, the effect being of a moving, talking portrait, which is exactly what the film is.
Taymor speaks of the process of art imitating art. "You are doing a film about a painter so you better try and come up to the level of the painter...if you can. I had terrific collaborators in Felipe Fernandez del Paso, the production designer, and Rodrigo Prieto the director of photography and Julie Weiss the costume designer.
"You start from Frida Kahlo. You start from the colours of her paintings and the detail of her work. But then if you just travel to Mexico and you visit The Blue House it's THAT blue, it's THAT green, it's THAT red. If you look at Frida Kahlo's dresses they are red and yellow. So you are not accentuating the colourfulness of Mexico. That is Mexico. And the purity of the light where we shot the movie - because there is no pollution - means that the clarity of light is there.
"Then I wanted to add these paintings that come alive so that it would step out of the biopic style. And in that case again I was trying to take Frida Kahlo's paintings and show how her imagination would come to these ideas. They are self-portraits after all, so you can find where in her life they actually happened. Or the moments where the most potent emotional things should happen - how does she see it? So you are kind of going from the exterior in the story telling to the interior of her imagination."
Thus, we see episodes of Frida's life enacted and then progress into a painting - her divorce from Rivera culminates in 'self portrait with cropped hair' - reality and image blending into a symbiosis of experience and emotion, rawly-captured.
In conveying this complex character, who herself exclaims "I'm like a jigsaw puzzle", Salma Hayek is worthy of her Oscar nomination. Hayek is a long time fan of Kahlo's work and had staged a long campaign to win the coveted role. Of her admiration for the artist she says "It started when I was around 14. The best way to summarise it is to say that she was so courageous. Of all the things that she was brave about I admire the most was her courage to be unique. She was bisexual at a very young age. Her paintings were not liked by many. She never changed her style whether people liked them or not. She had quite an unconventional relationship with Diego and I am sure people thought he was not the best thing. She did everything in life her own way. The way she dressed, cooked, everything about her was unique. She didn't care about what anybody thought and never apologised for who she was. On the contrary she celebrated some of the things that made her different. For example her moustache which she exaggerates in the paintings and her eyebrows which she also exaggerates. Sometimes she makes them into a symbol of freedom like a bird."
The film, like Frida's paintings, is rich in symbolism. On learning that her young lover is to leave for the Sorbonne, the hurt, bed-ridden Frida begins to sketch, then paint, small butterflies on the chrysalis of the plastercast that encases her, from which she will be reborn, transformed, ready to fly. Some critics have said that it is too episodic but the overall effect is of a collage, an art form that Taymor also utilises within the film's narrative. Equally worthy but unrewarded by a nod from the Academy is Alfred Molina as Rivera, bringing to the forefront a vulnerability and understated dignity to a potentially unsavory and pathetic character, fleshing out - quite literally, with extra pounds and padding - what could have so easily been a two-dimensional caricature. Instead, Molina's Rivera is the perfect foil for Hayek's Frida. The fact that you give a damn about these two often quite unpleasant characters is testament to both actors and their director.
The final masterstroke to this film is its score. Together, Taymor and composer Elliot Goldenthal have created a vibrant and moving fusion of powerful acoustic guitar solos, romantically reflective arrangements, and up-tempo folkloric-influenced tracks. There is also a haunting vocal duet sung by Brazilian music giant Caetano Velosa and Lila Downs, known for blending Latin, Native American and African Sounds. The soundtrack beautifully underpins the narrative. But then, Taymor is the person responsible for bringing Disney's The Lion King so spectacularly to the stage.
As for Salma Hayek, having now brought to life the story that was closest to her heart, one wonders where her passions will lead her next. She says "You have a dream and think about it, you involve other people in the dream so that it becomes better, and then when it's done you put it aside and have the courage to dream a new one. I am not going to compare anything else with this; I will just enjoy whatever it is.
"That is one lesson I learned from Senora Frida Kahlo."
Jean Lynch
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