Review of Frida (2002), a Movie About Mexican Painter Frida Kahlo

Frida, directed by Julie Taymor, has won two Academy Awards, for music (Elliott Goldenthal) and makeup (John E. Jackson and Beatrice De Alba), respectively. It was also nominated for six Academy Awards.

The actors do a wonderful job, all of them, including those in secondary roles besides Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, and Geoffrey Rush. And Salma Hayek should have definitely won Best Actress, but that was a strong year, with Renée Zellweger in Chicago and Nicole Kidman in The Hours. (Nicole Kidman took the award.)

Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo Calderón in Coyoacán, Mexico, in 1907, to a German-born father and a Mexican mother. She was a frolicsome child, even after suffering a debilitating bout of polio at six that left her with a limp. Although she took pains to hide her affected leg, what marked her for life was not this illness but a terrible accident she suffered at 18, when the bus she was in crashed into a tram. Her body was crushed, in particular her right side. She would suffer over 20 surgeries, would lose a baby before term, and would ultimately have her right leg amputated at the knee before her suffering would end in 1954, at only 47 years of age.

Frida was in pain all her life. A few days before her death, she wrote in her diary, “I hope the exit is joyful – and I hope never to return.” And yet Frida lived life with a passion, and those who knew her commented about her charms. French writer André Breton, the father of Surrealism, wrote that Frida had “all the gifts of seduction.”

The movie presents very well her turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera, and their deep-rooted love for each other. It also shows Frida as a woman who liked to drink, sing, and party. A woman who charmed an older Leon Trotsky when he sought refuge with his wife in Mexico, after his children had been murdered.