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Julie Taymor’s last directorial effort—2000’s hopelessly
gaudy, aimless Titus—was no doubt a failure, but at
least it was a spectacular one. Unfortunately, the same thing
cannot be said for Frida, Taymor’s latest effort, which
simply doesn’t take enough risks for a film about an artist
who did nothing but. Taymor takes the controversial figure
of Frida Kahlo (played by Hayek) and couches
her within the quaintest of stories. It’s easy to imagine
that Kahlo would be very disappointed with the result.
After all, here is a woman who not only survived great adversity,
but channeled it into her grotesquely beautiful artwork. In
1925, when Kahlo was a mere 18 years old, she was involved
in a near-fatal accident when a trolley car collided with
the bus she and her boyfriend Alejandro were riding on. She
suffered a broken collarbone, two broken ribs, 11 fractures
to her right leg, and her spinal column was broken in three
places. Most horrifically—and undoubtedly the experience that
is most often conveyed through her bloody, anatomical artwork—she
lost the ability to have children when a metal handrail pierced
her pelvis and exited through her vagina.
The crash scene is recreated well enough, with Kahlo’s body
covered in gold dust, blood, and her own tattered clothing,
but it’s also very distant, never throwing us into the wake
of what’s going on the way Kahlo’s artwork does. The scene
itself is indicative of the entire movie, which keeps us at
arm’s length, begging us to admire Kahlo, but never allowing
us to really get to know her. The film looks right, but it
never feels right—it never captures the paintings,
pain, and affairs that constituted Kahlo’s life. Taymor crafts
her film like a bored college freshman who is forced to write
an essay on The Scarlet Letter: The film seems like
it’s constructed more out of a sense of duty than curiosity.
This would certainly explain the glossing over of Kahlo’s
more controversial aspects, especially her unwavering support
of Stalin. Taymor, whose origins are on the stage,
has a fantastic eye for detail, but doesn’t bring much depth
to the film she is making. She’s not helped by Hayek, Molina,
or the rest of the cast, who obviously feel that they are
doing Very Important Roles, and therefore do not have to bring
any passion to their characters. Hayek sports a mean unibrow,
but she’s more suited to play Sesame Street’s Bert
than a spitfire like Kahlo: She looks more constipated than
anguished.
Still, she’s better than Banderas and Judd,
who play David Alfaro Siqueiros and Italian photographer
Tina Modotti, respectively. They’re both so over the
top, it’s embarrassing, although not as embarrassing as the
platitudes all of the characters spew throughout the course
of the film. You have to admire Frida for trying, but
in the end, it’s nothing short of an insult to the artist’s,
and audience’s, intelligence.
—Erin Steele
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