Frida Kahlo was one of those names I'd heard on many occasions without giving much thought. Aside from her being a Hispanic artist, I couldn't have told you anything about her. So I figured if I got nothing else out of this movie, it would give me a rough idea of who she really was.
It begins in 1922 Mexico, when the first major event of her life happened. A reckless bus driver puts 15-year-old Frida (Salma Hayek, then in her mid-30s) in critical condition. She never fully recovers, possibly due in part to similarly incompetent surgeons. Her first love (Antonio Banderas) does not stay by her side. Fortunately, between little else to do and a newfound interest in Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), she hones her own painting skill -- to the point that he has no constructive criticism. They go on to marry, despite her knowing that Diego cheated on his first wife a lot. She later calls that a far worse accident than the bus crash.
Leave it to a surrealist to espouse many countercultural ways. For starters, Frida and Diego are avid communists. Hypocritically, given her anger at Diego, Frida is about as licentious as he is, albeit with both women and men, including a much older and married Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush). Sometimes she wears men's clothing, even by modern standards, which must have looked all the odder at the time. She can win drinking contests against macho men and probably smokes just as much. No wonder she never feels healthy again. By the time she threatened her aunts with a gun for praying outside Trotsky's door, I knew that she and I would not have gotten along well at all.
As with Reds, I'm not sure how the filmmakers felt about communism, whether Bolshevik or Menshevik. They certainly acknowledge the infighting, but maybe they still think it the most ethical choice. When Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) tears down the wall on which Diego defiantly paints Vladimir Lenin, the music and other aspects of direction seem sympathetic to Diego. Me, I'm on Nelson's side: He paid for the project, so he calls the shots. It's not "the people's" wall.
Those who have wanted to see Hayek naked get multiple opportunities. Others appear nude as well, for portraits and/or liaisons, but only the women get full-frontals. Being straight and male does not stop me from continually getting annoyed at the double standard.
"Enough of that," you may say; "what about the art?" Well, we see only so much of Frida's actual work, with few surrealist points in appreciable detail. To a Salvador Dali fan, it seems borderline amateur. But it is more intriguing than Diego's, at least in her blue period.
From time to time, the movie slips in animation to represent Frida's imagination, particularly when she broods. I'd like this better if it had more consistency. Not only is it very occasional, but it varies in style. During her first surgery, she imagines stop-motion Dia de los Muertos-type puppets that might have imitated a Tim Burton piece. The rest is more like her paintings, with hardly any movement.
If I were to recommend one flick with Hayek and Banderas, it would be Puss in Boots. This one I vaguely suggest for educational purposes. It's well acted and all; I just don't care much for what it depicts.
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