Word: kahlo
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Watching Frida, the new biopic of the famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, it’s difficult to not remember director Julie Taymor’s last effort, the much-lauded big-budget adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus. That film was notable for, if nothing else, its brash and overwrought self-indulgence; it was a true exercise in almost surreal stylization. It marked Taymor as a new visual force in American cinema and was simultaneously criticized for its over-the-top severity. Strangely enough, the occasionally laughable audacity of Titus is sorely missed in this lush but uninspired...
...least a bit diverting. The script provides ample room for its all-star cast to give showy, but convincing performances, for one. Salma Hayek, in a year of break-out roles for actors of mediocre repertoires (just ask Adam Sandler), fits nicely into the role of Kahlo. Her dizzying spurts of emotional vulnerability play surprisingly well, but in other instances, it’s subtlety that she and co-star Alfred Molina (as Kahlo’s infamous husband, Diego Rivera) clearly lack...
...seem to decide at times whether she’s making a story of a torturous and long-lasting love affair (and one that’s not very interesting to watch in this particular adaptation), or a serious analysis of the motivations and artistic inspirations of Frida Kahlo...
...Leon Trotsky, who for a time was a lover of Kahlo’s. More time is devoted to his role than Norton’s, surely, but it’s intensely painful seeing Taymor attempting to inflate his appearance by forcing us to watch Trotsky and Kahlo staring at a beautiful Mexican vista, all while listening to Trotsky wax corny Hollywood philosophical, with uplifting music ready to murmur...
...ballsy Titus knew well that it was visually arresting and never forgot, Frida oscillates nervously between an intense visual palette and boring displays of ho-hum period cinematography and horrendously contrived narrative set-ups that bore more than they evoke. Early in the film, the trolley crash that renders Kahlo periodically unable to walk is shot and edited with a shocking visceral quality and a brash artistic confidence. Immediately after, Taymor gives us a shamelessly trippy, grotesque animated sequence that quite unsubtly suggests that the remainder of the film will explore the lines between Kahlo’s life...