There is a point when the portrayal of art through a different medium can become redundant and mere flattery. While Julie Taymor's new release, "Frida," approaches the limits of such repetition, it escapes that fate thanks to its striking originality. Rather than insulting the genius of Frida Kahlo, the film gives the viewer a new appreciation for the Mexican artist's life and work.
The film, based on a book of the same name by Hayden Herrera, is the chronicle of a hard life. Focusing on the conditions that produced Kahlo's work, the film follows her life in a deeper sense then simple narration; it tries to express the emotional underpinnings of her life.
The film begins on a certain day in the secondary-school years of Frida Kahlo (Selma Hayek). This moment is a logical starting point, because it is the day she first interacts with famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina), Frida's eventual husband and a bear of a man.
Kahlo spies on Rivera as he attempts to commit adultery with one of his models. Kahlo cries out and warns Rivera that his wife is coming -- but when he stands, pistol clenched in hand, looking around the room for the spy, Kahlo calmly stands and informs him that she is simply keeping him honest, and leaves the room.
The next important scene the viewers witness is a tragic accident in a streetcar that leaves Kahlo in a coma for three weeks and trapped in a full body cast. As she lies for weeks, trapped in the prison of her cast, she begins to paint in earnest. We witness her progression from self-portraits using a mirror on the roof of her canopy bed to paintings of her family members.
When she miraculously regains her ability to walk, Frida takes her paintings back to Rivera. He is impressed with her work, and as the two grow to know each other better, the twice-married womanizer somehow falls in love with Kahlo's fiercely independent character.
The rest of the film focuses largely on this relationship, and Rivera seems to be always in Kahlo's thoughts -- whether of love or of rage for his countless affairs.
Kahlo's unquenchable passion lies at the movie's very center. Every interaction and every event in her life is just another canvas on which she can project yet another image of herself.
Like Kahlo's art, "Frida" is entirely focused on expressing the psyche beneath the surface of its subject. In rare form, the film beautifully incorporates Kahlo's paintings into real scenes, often focusing for several minutes on the slight differences between realized canvas and filmed reality.
The visuals are one of the film's strongest points. The same fluid efficiency that Taymor's direction produces during the scenes focused on the interplay between paint and flesh impressively permeates the whole film. Indeed, the camera work, lighting and costumes just may be the strongest point of the film.
Another part of the movie's visual aesthetic is the rather stilted animations that occur between certain scenes of the film. Borrowing images from Kahlo's work and almost always centered on death -- another very visible theme of the movie -- these transitions are eerie and strangely powerful.
The actors' work is good but not extraordinary. Hayek gives a technically solid performance and her portrayal of passion and grief are moving, but occasionally her portrayal of Kahlo's limp seems to vary. Molina, too, gives a good performance, but fails to convince the viewer that his spousal love is sincere.
Early in the film, when Rivera is proposing to Kahlo, he tells her that while he can never be faithful, he promises at least his loyalty. The film itself makes a similar promise to its audience, and while in one sense "Frida" isn't worthy of its subject, it always remains loyal to her aesthetics.
Throughout the film stands an outwardly plain woman with a unibrow who, no matter how many times she tastes heartbreak, expresses it ultimately in the solace of her canvas with the comfort of her brush.
