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Here's an advanced warning to all of you East-Coast cinephiles
or art academics who are ready to shoot off an e-mail at me
for anything I may misinterpret in my review of Frida,
Julie Taymor's take on the wild and crazy life of famed
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo: I don't know anything about her
or her work prior to the viewing of the film. I've seen her
work in art history books and the like but I've never taken
a class on famous Mexican painters and I've never pretended
to have a versed sense of her visual themes. From what I could
pick up during the two-hour span of the flick, Kahlo focused
on alienation and pain through a series of surreal self-portraits.
The paintings reveal a tortuous self-impression that is disturbing
yet beautiful to the observer. It is to the film's company
and to its lead actress Salma Hayek credit that this pain
is properly conveyed through the telling of her life. The
audience is given a tour of the happy family life turned upside
down by a tragic accident only to grasp on to the hope of
happiness and love with the flaw and demanding painter Diego
Rivera (Alfred Molina). We see the angst and the sadness channel
itself from reality to the canvas. However, it is to the DIS-credit
of Taymor that a good chunk of moments are so overextended
and overdramatized that the emotions lose any weight to a
total cinematic overload.
Hayek portrays Kahlo from the schoolyard days where Kahlo
tempts young boys with sexual advances and peeps in on local
artists while they have extracurricular activities with their
assistants. One day, while venturing into town, the bus Kahlo
is traveling on crashes and leaves her injured. This is a
very important event it turns out for two reasons: (1) It
leaves Kahlo crippled for life and (2) Her recovery period
is when she begins to do extensive painting. We, as the audience,
understand that this will be a significant scene because there
would be no other reason to show it so early in the film.
But here's a preliminary, and quite telling, example of how
the director injects too much "style" into a scene
to achieve directorial distrust. The bus begins to skid and
everything goes into slo-motion. Everyone gets the "Ohmaga"
look on their face as all sound evaporates and the camera
circles the passengers on the boss. There have been films
that portray Armageddon with less intensity. And, in case
we don't foresee the importance of this moment, Taymor has
an extra on the bus holding a CAGED BIRD. Of course, one could
only guess that the BIRD IS RELEASED FROM THE CAGE upon impact.
You know, in case we don't get that this moment will also
release Kahlo's artistic ability. Or something. Cut to black
and then we go to an operating room that is filled with stop-animation
visual's from Kahlo's later work performing surgery on her.
Is this out of place and showy? Of course, but Taymor must
have thought that this was going to be a real kick for the
audience to believe that Kahlo envisioned all of this in some
life-and-death netherworld. (Although it must have been disconcerting
in the editing room when the scene played like the Sandworm
attacks from Beetle Juice.) To top this off, the first
thing Kahlo does is draw BUTTERFLIES on her full-body cast!
Oh, will she too break away from this cocoon and become an
object of flying beauty? Let's hope so or this will be as
boring as Misery without Kathy Bates.
At this point, I was ready to endure no more. I wanted to
take my pint of Wheat State Golden beer back to the concession
stand and go watch Bond again. But I stayed and I'm glad because
I was able to take so much from the characters and the performances.
Kahlo ends up working under and sleeping with Rivera. They
get married despite her need for freedom and his need to be
amorous with his admirers. They promise to not be faithful,
but only "loyal." As she begins to perfect her art,
he whisks them away to New York City where the gringos seem
to get a kick out Rivera's revolutionary paintings and politics.
Why, we even get a reenactment of the Rivera-Nelson Rockefeller
(Hayek boy-toy and former actor Ed Norton) battle over the
Communist mural so nicely portrayed in Tim Robbins' 1999 Cradle
Will Rock. These moments that focused on Rivera seemed
as though they belonged in another movie, and that's not just
because they WERE in another movie for so long. I understand
that the film was trying to show how emotionally upsetting
and abusive Rivera acted towards Kahlo. But it seems to hijack
the film. Hayek's Kahlo prevents this. Instead of doing a
pity the poor victim charade, Hayek and Molina do a nice balancing
act with their performances. We see the intensity and the
passion of Rivera but we also see his boorishness and his
uncaring demeanor. We see the pain felt by Kahlo but we also
see her rage towards Rivera as hypocrisy. She, too, has taken
advantage of a free lifestyle, getting it on with everyone
from Leon Trotsky (A barely recognizable Geoffrey Rush) to
Josephine Baker. (Admittedly, that latter scene had a nice
touch of Mulholland Drive stimulation.) She is called
out for this behavior, and rightfully so. It only adds to
perpetrating her self-loathing and pain. To me, this is the
best thing about Frida. It shows where the emotions
that appear in the work come from and does so in a way that
actually connects. My biggest gripe with Pollack, the
last significant and "critically lauded" art biopic,
was that we got this booze and womanizing tour of his life
but never understood where those cubes came from. Here, when
we see the self-portrait pierced and mangled, it is obvious
and devastating. No small accomplishment for a film. And frankly,
no small accomplishment for Hayek either. Many scoffed when
this version carried on as projects developed for Madonna
and Jennifer Lopez in charge floundered. But Hayek delivers
a quiet and fairly reserved performance that would be overheard
of from Evita. (Lopez might have been able to have pulled
it off, but Hayek doesn't have the superstar aura that could
possibly distract.) Most of her performance is developed through
silent facial expressions and this is particularly impressive
when she had to wear that una-brow the whole time. If she
gets nominated, it will be well-deserved.
It's just too bad that Taymor had to make her impression
on the film so bold. As an artist, Kahlo speaks volumes. And
the production designer of the film was smart to design that
sets in the dark blues and purples that were so prominent
in her paintings. But time and time again, Taymor would have
to inject some "clever" piece of set work that seemed
to say, "Hey, did you know I directed The Lion King
on Broadway. I am ARTSY" The bus crash and the surgery
and the butterflies were bad enough. Do we need the slo-mo
lesbian sex? Okay, maybe we needed the slo-mo lesbian sex.
But some of the more "shocking" personal revelations
at the end were so overdone that I started watching for camera
tricks as opposed to caring about what was happening. It's
too bad that Taymor didn't trust her great cast and just let
them be. Hayek's great, Molina's great, Rush is great. Hell:
Norton, Antonio, and even Ashley Judd do some pretty good
stuff in their lingering moments. For a film about the pain
of the artist, Taymor seems more interested in creating pain
for the audience.
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