After her bracingly original debut feature, the time-hopping,
phantasmagorical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus, expectations were high for stage director turned filmmaker
Julie Taymor’s follow-up, but with the arrival of Frida, a rather routine biopic that traces the life of Mexican
painter Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek), it’s tough not to be a bit disappointed,
even if the end result is a better than average exploration of an artist’s
life. Perhaps the most shocking thing about Frida
is how darned conventional its script is. Hewing quite closely to Hollywood’s
rulebook for this sort of picture, the film traces the life and loves of Kahlo
from maturation to death, pausing along the way occasionally to offer an
“edgy” sexual escapade or two. The vast majority of the running time is
spent examining the relationship and eventual marriage between Kahlo and famed
Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), much to the detriment of the
picture. Though their involvement is fraught with compromises and drama (Diego
says he’s “physiologically incapable of fidelity” and Frida describes him
as “the best of friends and the worst of husbands”) we see so many
lovey-dovey scenes between the two that any edge that’s built up when we see
them cavorting sexually with celebrities and same-sex partners is dulled away
completely. The point behind watching all of this settles down into a
predictable “love conquers all” message, and when using it to examine Frida
as an artist it fails almost completely to enlighten. Never does the film wholly
answer the more complex questions raised like whether Rivera’s attraction
toward Kahlo is based on a physical attraction, an aesthetic one, a sympathetic
one, or a
combination of the three.
Perhaps, though, Frida’s focus on the soap opera
tale that makes up its subject’s personal is for the best. Whenever the script
tries to visually explain her art (usually in a visually stunning sequence in
which the painting in question springs to life via painterly CGI effects) it
ends ups presenting a totally reductive 1:1 correlation between the events in
Frida’s life and the images on her canvas. Such a simple reading of her work
suggests that her art has no real meaning beyond aesthetic appeal for those not
intimate with her autobiographical particulars, and as such seems to short
change the artist’s real-life output. Most of the screenplay’s treatment of
her character seems similarly slight, unfortunately, though Hayek does her best
to imbue the role with real conviction. We see the school aged Frida having lots
of sex (though it’s the sanitized Hollywood version of sex that’s kept
mostly off-screen) and dressing defiantly like a man for a family photograph,
but her free-spirited defiance is meant to be taken for granted. A horrific,
expertly staged traumatic trolley accident early on forces Kahlo to remain in
bed for an extended period, and the movie wants us to look at her body cast as a
literal cocoon from which she emerges, fully formed, as an artist, but I don’t
think it does her a service by suggesting the metamorphosis from frisky
schoolgirl to profound artist occurs overnight. Because she’s so sketchily
drawn, it’s tough not to be more interested by the compulsive complexities
that exist in her eventual husband, Diego. Alfred Molina dwarfs Hayek’s Kahlo
with both the intensity of his performance and his physical presence.
Though Frida offers only what feels like a surface
level recap of its subject’s life, and as a result feels rather light on
substance, Taymor ensures that it has style to burn. Countless directorial
embellishments show off her visual flair. Scene transitions are handled more
adeptly than usual, preserving the motion from one scene to next. The camerawork
is often excitingly mobile (the highlight being a tango between Hayek and Ashley
Judd). A sometimes color corrected palette heightens the reality of what’s
happening in the film. A trip to New York where we see Diego and Frida walk
through a metropolis composed entirely of postcards is only challenged in
creative inspiration by the nightmarish surgery scene that recycles imagery from
the Mexican Day of the Dead. It’s a shame that Taymor’s visual sensibilities
can’t do more to sell the drama to us. The parade of celebrity cameos that pop
up throughout the movie don’t do much to help or hinder the believability of
the scenario, but they do certainly remind you that the film is far more a
creation of studio interests than a lone artistic vision. Hopefully, next time
she picks up her brush, Taymor will be able to paint in colors of her choosing.
