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Review by Harvey Karten
3 stars out of 4
What are the chances that an obese 42-year-old man, not
exceptionally rich and not particularly generous with what he has--
who drinks like a fish and cares little for the women who surround
him--would succeed in having affairs by the truckload? Not many.
Ah but there's one big extra: he's an alpha male, one who has
won extraordinary renown in his field and is able to phone the
president of his country at any time. What's more, as a
communist whose friends of both sexes would hang up in artists'
colonies, he would be expected to find women who didn't believe
sexual relationships were something to be saved until marriage.
He's Diego Rivera, Mexico's most famous male painter, whose
murals can be seen on public buildings in Mexico City and whose
painting came awfully close to decking the halls of a prominent
building in New York's Rockefeller Center. "Frida," as you can tell
from the title, is not about him, nor is it about some woman
behind the man, but is dead-on about a person whom some
consider even more talented than Rivera. Frida Kahlo's bio
splashes across the big screen featuring the sorts of surreal
images that a director based principally in the theater could bring
to it. Julie Taymor's bio is in many ways a conventional one, first-
rate in every way except one: though we leave the movie house
with a strong image of the kind of person that Frida is, we
scarcely know why she is famous since Taymor does not put
enough of her works on the screen for us to evaluate.
Though Frida Kahlo is less known that the painter who became
her husband at least until now the fault does not lie with any
dearth of information, since over one hundred books have been
published specifically about her relationship with Diego Rivera
Unlike Vincent Van Gogh who voluntarily disfigured himself at a
self-destructive moment, Friday (Salma Kayek), born in 1907,
was the victim at the age of eighteen of a terrible accident. A
trolley car in which she was riding crashed into a building, lodging
a metal rod into her body and causing her a lifetime of pain and
complications years later that would cause her allegedly to
commit suicide at the age of forty-seven. Bedridden for months,
bitter that her life of amusement with the young men of her time
might be over, she took up painting when her father (Roger Rees)
presented her with an easel and discovered that she was
enormously talented. She called upon Diego Rivera (Albert
Molina) for an honest opinion, one which pleased her and led
shortly to their marriage despite his refusal to promise her fidelity.
Rivera would ultimately go to New York to paint a mural
commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) one which
was torn down because the painter refused to change the
presence of Lenin on the canvas and later, back in Mexico, Rivera
would provide shelter for political refugee Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey
Rush).
One gets the impression that the bi-sexual Frida wanted to
compete with her husband in the numbers of affairs she
conducted included one with Trotsky himself and a few with other
women. Her tango with photographer Tina Modotti (Ashley Judd)
generates more heat than the same dance between Lola Jansco
and Regina Lambert in Jonathan Demme's "The Truth About
Charlie.
Costume designer Julie Weiss shines in decking Ms. Hayek out
with exquisite, body clinging Indian outfits, but the surreal images,
particularly one that simulates the title character's final illness and
ultimate cremation, are eye-poppers. Rodrigo Preito shows
Mexican cathedrals and quaint neighborhoods favorably, the
atmosphere given a huge boost by mariachi music on Elliot
Goldenthal's soundtrack.
Copyright © 2002 Harvey Karten
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