|
Painting a passionate life in bold, tumultuous colors
SHAWN LEVY
Moviemakers generally enter into biographies of great artists with the
best intentions. But the resulting films have too often embarrassed the
memories of their subjects and the reputations of those who would
celebrate them.
Perhaps the stumbling block is the inescapable hero worship, or the
desire to sprinkle famous names and faces throughout, or the thorny
problem of depicting artistic inspiration and effort in a fashion that
conveys a sense of the wonder of creation. In truth, most film
biographies of artists, writers and musicians fail to live up to their
promise.
"Frida," a film about the life and art of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo,
avoids almost all of the pitfalls of the genre and piles up several
notable plusses -- gorgeous color, passionate acting, lovely music -- in
addition to evading the usual minuses. It's a project that was batted
around Hollywood for years and finally brought to screen after nearly a
decade of being championed by its star, Salma Hayek. If the story of an
avant-garde painter and political and sexual revolutionary seems a
stretch for the actress, she acquits herself with what is easily her
finest performance to date, as well as in her collaboration with the
brilliant theater director Julie Taymor, who finds magic in a sometimes
weedy genre.
The script skims chronologically through Kahlo's life: her brazenly
liberated youth; her crippling in a streetcar accident; her sickbed
application to painting; her courting the muralist and lothario Diego
Rivera, first as a mentor, then as lover; the firecracker marriage that
resulted; life-changing trips to New York and Paris; devotion to
communist revolutionary causes that culminated in an offer to house the
fugitive Leon Trotsky; Kahlo's subsequent affair with Trotsky; and her
untimely death, at age 47.
If the straightforward narrative verges on the pedestrian, nothing in
the presentation or the performances does. Taymor captures the luscious
colors of Kahlo's world -- on canvas, in her environment, in her
volatile emotions -- and imparts a feeling of dancing and dreaming to
almost every scene. Particularly striking are the surreal streetcar
wreck and the many scenes in which reality bleeds into some famous
canvas of Kahlo's, or vice versa, creating a seamless connection between
the life and art.
As Kahlo, Hayek evinces her familiar spitfire energy but channels it
fetchingly into politics and painting as well as the predictable (and
not so predictable) amours. Brilliantly cast opposite her as Rivera,
Alfred Molina delivers yet another in a career full of nuanced,
note-perfect performances, capturing the contradictions and appetites of
that titanic figure with humor and sometimes appalling frankness.
Geoffrey Rush makes a nicely threadbare Trotsky, while the likes of
Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas and Edward Norton perk up the picture with
cameos. Roger Rees imbues the part of Kahlo's father with a charmingly
weary air.
While the script of "Frida" struggles at times to be something more than
an ordinary and-then-this-happened biography, there's a buoyancy to the
direction and acting that make the film special. Like Ed Harris'
"Pollock," it's an instance of filmmakers being so inspired by the life
and achievement of an artist (or, in this case, a pair of artists) that
they transcend genre to create something invigorating.
|
