"She wasn't crazy enough," I heard some Vogue-damaged yo-yo complain about Salma Hayek's portrayal of
the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, in this biopic directed by theater maverick Julie Taymor (who staged Broadway's The Lion King and made her feature
film debut with the excessive but intriguing Titus). The movie opens with a burst of seeming insanity-Hayek's Kahlo prone in a four-poster bed that she's having carried out of her colorful, animal-filled house and put on a flatbed truck; where it's headed-graveyard? hospital?-we won't find out until the end of the movie. Frida follows Kahlo's life from her relatively pampered days
in an upper-class Mexican household to her explorations of passion and
politics with the muralist Diego Rivera
(Alfred Molina), who starts as a
mentor, becomes a lover, and winds up her spiritually loyal but physically unfaithful husband. With splendid supporting turns from the likes of Ashley Judd, Edward Norton, and Geoffrey Rush, and some terrific set pieces, Taymor brings Kahlo's art to life. The most striking scene depicts the bus accident that shattered Kahlo's body and left her in near-constant pain for the rest of her life-a stunning demonstration of what movies can do better than any other medium. As a whole, this picture is a portrait of the artist as a human being-volatile and passionate, but also decent and, yes, sane.
Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.