: Frida
An absolutely amazing film. It’s the biography of a remarkable Mexican artist of the early and mid 20th Century, Frida Kahlo. I’d never heard of her before this film, but one of the things I liked is they displayed a lot of her artwork in the film and it truly is excellent stuff, rather Dali-like (Dali’s my favorite artist) with abstract and contradictory images mixed together. Frida’s story is one of trouble and struggle: a bus accident leaves her severely injured and the doctors say she’ll never walk again (but she does), and then she marries an unfaithful husband, and eventually her back and leg problems (which cause her pain all her life and lead her to an addiction to painkillers) mean she has to have her leg amputated. In every way Frida was controversial: she was an outspoken woman, an artist, politically she was a Communist, and she apparently was bisexual. Some of this stuff is celebrated in the film, some just presented, but it’s always done artistically, and that lessons the effect of any preaching. Salma Hayak in the lead role is incredible: she actually pulls off the early teenage schoolgirl scenes with complete believability as well as the 47-year-old woman Frida eventually becomes. (I loved that, for a it always annoys me when films use a different actor for the young character and the young actor doesn’t look anything like the real adult actor.) The movie is sad yet triumphant — like Frida herself, it celebrates life and living. There’s quite a bit of humor, from the infamous dance scene with Ashley Judd to great lines like the one near the end when Frida is caught drinking by her doctor and she says, “Let me drink this one tequila and I promise I won’t drink at my funeral.” Wonderful film.
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