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 production.
It’s not that Frida isn’t at 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.
Both are capable actors, particularly Molina, but their performances harbor an undercurrent of misdirection, as if in every take Taymor almost got it. Whenever the two of them aren’t arguing over Rivera’s adulterous behavior, their relationship seems forced at best, and at times almost cheesy. Taymor can’t 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.
As a narrative, Frida works fine. The major events in her extraordinarily interesting life are shown in painstaking detail, from her misadventures as a young and idealistic student to her much-famed visit to New York for Rivera’s commission from Nelson Rockefeller. Most of the time, however, these details fly by with little investment, as Taymor attempts grandeur but ends up with only a bulging detachment.
A good example is the two blaringly obnoxious celebrity cameos. One of these is from Edward Norton, who pops up as Nelson Rockefeller in a few scenes, only to serve as a significantly annoying distraction. The other, more problematic, is Geoffrey Rush’s turn as 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.
The flaw that colors everything in the film, however, is Taymor’s hesitant and wobbly direction. While the 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 and her astounding surrealistic art.
What actually follows, unfortunately, is another 90 minutes of derivative dramatic conundrum. Kahlo’s art, which is considerably more passionate than this film is willing to realize, imitated her life in more interesting ways than Taymor shows us. When the paintings are shown on screen, only the most manipulated audience member would not want to be transported to some far-off gallery, where perhaps we can enter the world of Frida Kahlo without the distracting influence of dramatic contrivance.
