REVIEW
FRIDA
Starring Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina and Ashley Judd
Directed by Julie Taymor
Opens Friday, November 8
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A movie doesn’t have to be great to be worth watching.
It doesn’t have to be well paced, nor does it have to be entertaining. It can contain some poor performances, some bad accents and some choppy narrative and still be worth the price of a ticket. All it takes is a little artistic integrity and a director who puts her personal vision above the need to entertain. Frida, Julie Taymor’s bio-pic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, is just such a film.
Don’t misunderstand me. Frida is not a bad movie. There are as many strong moments as there are weak, and Taymor’s unflinching style and vision mitigate the weaknesses. But this is not the kind of movie that you praise without reservation – no matter how much you appreciate the artistry involved in its execution.
One of Taymor’s finest moves is her weaving of Kahlo’s art and style into the fabric of the film. After Kahlo’s tragic bus accident – which broke her body and left her in endless pain – Taymor crafts a hallucination sequence to represent Kahlo’s unconscious, near-death state. Animated skeletons, straight out of Kahlo’s paintings, poke and pierce Frida’s dreamstate body with cruel, Kahlo-inspired tools. It’s a beautiful expression of the artist’s mental and physical anguish – unavoidable and important themes in Kahlo’s life and work.
The evocation of Kahlo’s art in Taymor’s film is far and away the strongest element of Frida. Whether Taymor is expressing the artist’s disdain for U.S. culture or her horror at the stillbirth of her son, the shift into Kahlo’s art is flawless. Diego Rivera as King Kong, Paris in monochrome and Frida caged in a steel corset that contains a cracking Empire State Building continually remind us that Frida’s art was not the only important passion in her life – it was matched by her Communist politics and her love for Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). Taymor expresses these things without saying a word – she lets the images speak for themselves.
But for all Taymor’s brilliance, she occasionally falls into the trap of self-indulgence. She inexplicably opts to bookend her film. There’s no reason to use this tired narrative tool, yet the film opens with Frida in bed, being removed from her "Blue House," and ends with Frida in bed, reaching her destination – the first Mexican exhibition of her art. There are no thematic or artistic reasons for Taymor’s narrative choice. It’s pure convention. And when Taymor is conventional, she’s betraying the very thing that makes her the perfect director for Frida – her originality.
Sadly, Taymor’s direction isn’t the only uneven ground here. The performances in Frida range from embarrassing to sublime. Geoffrey Rush squanders a fantastic opportunity to define the role of the Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky with the weakest Russian accent ever put on film. (Yes, even Harrison Ford’s K-19 accent was better.) And Ashley Judd is desperately miscast as the world-famous photographer Tina Modotti. It’s obvious she was cast for her looks and name – not for her acting ability. Her performance is consistently over-the-top and she simply can’t handle the demands of her Italian accent.
There is no question that Salma Hayek delivers the best performance of her life – her Frida is riveting – but there’s plenty of room for improvement. Ultimately, the best performances come from actors one might not expect to deliver them. Molina, the highly underrated character actor, is perfectly cast as Rivera – delivering the only truly Oscar-worthy performance in Frida. But the biggest surprise is Roger Rees as Frida’s father, Guillermo Kahlo. Most of us know him as Robin Colcord, the pompous owner of "Cheers," but his gentle performance in Frida should exorcise his sit-com demons forever, earning him consistent work in substantial projects.
Unevenly directed and unevenly acted, Frida is not for everyone. It will not be a crowd-pleaser, it will not make a lot of money and it won’t win a lot of awards. But if you’re a fan of film and art, it’s worth seeing – if only to support a director who is an artist first and a capitalist second. |
