Frida Kahlo was a lover, not an artist. On occasion, between bisexual liaisons and frequent battles with her unfaithful husband, she painted. This is what Julie Taymor leads audiences to believe in her new film Frida. The long-awaited biopic is a kitchen sink of non-discrimination, focusing on everything except that which is most important—the paintings. Kahlo’s art, the film says, was a piddling pastime that intruded on a turbulent life whose events are infinitely more interesting than anything that might have sprung from Kahlo’s imagination.
At their first meeting, Kahlo (Salma Hayek) is told by future husband Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), “If you’re a real painter, you’ll paint because you can’t stop painting. You’ll paint till you die.” And indeed she did, passing away at the young age of 47. This is where the movie begins, mere months before her death, as the bed-ridden artist is carried to her first exhibition. We next see her as an 18-year-old troublemaker, dressing like a man for family portraits and having sex in an armoire. This vivaciousness is almost destroyed when she suffers an accident that will leave her in pain for the remainder of her life, her leg and pelvis crushed. A full-body cast lays in store for Kahlo and she emerges, like a butterfly out of her chrysalis, a full-fledged painter. Kahlo soon marries famed muralist Rivera, beginning what is to be a life defined by art, politics and sex—a typical tale of the artistic temperament.
Frida is Taymor’s second feature film. Her debut, Titus, was a remarkable work of visual sumptuousness that, along with her direction of Broadway’s The Lion King, revealed a penchant for the visual flourish. In light of both this history and the boldness of Kahlo’s paintings, Taymor should have given us our share of eye candy. This, unfortunately, does not happen. The film seems intent on staying grounded in biographical details and hardly takes the opportunity to launch itself into the next level. Sadly, Frida is pretty straightforward, obliging the audience with every single detail of the painter’s life to the detriment of her actual artistic process. Where the paintings themselves get short shrift, the rough and tumble partnership of Kahlo and Rivera is given more than its fair share of screen time. This is the difficulty with a biopic on an artist—the tendency is to focus on the person rather than the art. 2000’s Pollock balanced the two, allowing us to become involved in his wreck of a life while simultaneously giving us insight into the creative process of a genius. Frida, though, is content to show us a few paintings every now and then, before throwing them to the wayside in favor of sex, screaming and suffering.
The only moments where the movie takes off from its pedestrian narrative are when it leaves Mexico or when Taymor merges life and art. In 1933, Rivera is commissioned by the young Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) to paint a mural in the lobby of Rockefeller Center. He and Kahlo are off to swinging New York and Taymor inserts them into an overwhelming collage of moving images, drawings and photographs. To the syncopated rhythms of big band music, Kahlo and Riviera weave through the Stork Club awning, the Chrysler Building and the grinding gears of the mechanical age. This barrage of visuals allows us, for once in the film, to feel validated in cinema’s ability to serve as an amalgam of every other possible art form: music, dancing, photography, architecture and painting—they are all compressed into a rapidly cresting wave front of stimuli.
Taymor also tries to bridge the gap between experience and expression. At several points during Frida, Kahlo’s paintings morph into their real-life inspirations, or vice-versa. After their wedding, Kahlo and Riviera appear as oil paintings that slowly morph to flesh and blood. These are impressive moments, befitting of Taymor’s visual acumen. But they are few and far between, as the movie drags itself from event to event in Kahlo’s life, attempting to cover more than is possible. At a measly 47 years, it is frightening to imagine how lengthy the film would have been should she have survived another decade. (bottomlineequipment.com)
For a film about art by a notably visual director, Frida does not deliver on its potential. More of a romantic drama than anything else, the film places it gaze on the tumultuous marriage of its protagonists. Hayek and Molina put in solid performances, but even they cannot save the film from its aimless meanderings.
