Frida

A movie by Julie Taymore

With Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Valeria Golino, and others

Helga says:

This movie tells the life of Frida Kahlo, Mexico's greatest activist for peace and women’s lib. In her youth, Frida has a severe car accident that will leave her crippled for life. She married Diego Rivera, one of the greatest painters and a communist. She lived her exciting but also very unhappy life in left-wing artistic circles.

Salma Hayek doesn’t only play Frida, she is also the producer of this movie. She wanted to show that she is more than a one-dimensional actress.

Unfortunately, she didn't succeed. My opinion about this movie is very ambiguous. I really loved the story and the set, but the person Frida is ridiculed.

The movie is a fantastic kaleidoscope of colours and a real treat for the eye. It doesn't happen often that I enjoy the look of a movie so much. If it were just for the images and the sound, I could watch it many more times without getting bored.

But let's talk about Frida herself. So she has been crippled and is now trying to put her pain and sorrow into her paintings.

In the movie she is in a plaster cast at first, then we watch her being given orthopaedic devices, making her nearly cry. But then she gets a grip on herself, hopping through the movie like a nimble doe, enjoying her life to the fullest. In between we hear her complaining a bit that she is hurting all over, but it isn't very convincing.

And this is what I find absolutely appalling. It doesn't do this great painter justice. Of course a beautiful girl is much more eye catching than a cripple who is wretched with pain, but that grotesque false image of this woman is totally beside the mark and doesn't help the audience to understand Frida's artistic, social, and political oeuvre. Here, authenticity has been sacrificed to a supposed sense of aesthetics, and this is why this movie gets a big fat penalty point.

If you are willing to totally disregard the main character and content yourself with immersing yourself in the atmosphere of Mexico City some 80 years ago, you will love this movie. But maybe we should better rename it a "Mexican kaleidoscope with famous extras" then.

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Helga

Last changes: 12/04/04