Frida is a 2002 Miramax/Ventanarosa biographical film which depicts the professional and private life of the surrealist Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. It stars Salma Hayek in her Academy Award nominated portrayal as Kahlo and Alfred Molina as her husband, Diego Rivera.

The movie was adapted by Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava, Anna Thomas and Edward Norton (uncredited) from the book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera. It was directed by Julie Taymor. It won Oscars for Best Makeup and Best Original Music Score (recipient: Elliot Goldenthal).

Plot[link]

Frida begins with the traumatic accident Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) suffered at the age of 18 when a car trolley collided with a bus she was riding. She is impaled by a metal pole and the injuries she sustained plague her for the rest of her life. To help her through convalescence, her father brings her a canvas upon which to start painting. Throughout the film, a scene starts as a painting, then slowly dissolves into a live-action scene with actors.

Frida also details the artist's dysfunctional relationship with the muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). When Rivera proposes to Kahlo, she tells him she expects from him loyalty if not fidelity. Diego's appraisal of her painting ability is one of the reasons that she continues to paint. Throughout the marriage, Rivera cheats on her with a wide array of women, while the bisexual Kahlo takes on male and female lovers, including in one case having an affair with the same woman as Rivera.

The two travel to New York City so that he may paint the mural Man at the Crossroads at the Rockefeller Center. While in the United States, Kahlo suffers a miscarriage, and her mother dies in Mexico. Rivera refuses to compromise his communist vision of the work to the needs of the patron, Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton); as a result, the mural is destroyed. The pair return to Mexico, with Rivera the more reluctant of the two.

Kahlo's sister Cristina moves in with the two at their San Ángel studio home to work as Rivera's assistant. Soon afterward, Kahlo discovers that Rivera is having an affair with her sister. She leaves him, and subsequently sinks into alcoholism. The couple reunite when he asks her to welcome and house Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush), who has been granted political asylum in Mexico. She and Trotsky begin an affair, which forces the married Trotsky to leave the safety of his Coyoacán home.

Kahlo leaves for Paris after Diego realizes she was unfaithful to him with Trotsky. When she returns to Mexico, he asks for a divorce. Soon afterwards, Trotsky is murdered in Mexico City. Rivera is temporarily a suspect, and Kahlo is incarcerated in his place when he is not found. Rivera helps get her released.

Kahlo has her toes removed when they become gangrenous. Rivera asks her to remarry him, and she agrees. Her health continues to worsen, including the amputation of a leg, and she ultimately dies after finally having a solo exhibition of her paintings in Mexico.

Cast[link]

• Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo
• Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera
• Geoffrey Rush as Leon Trotsky
• Mía Maestro as Cristina Kahlo
• Ashley Judd as Tina Modotti
• Antonio Banderas as David Alfaro Siqueiros
• Edward Norton as Nelson Rockefeller
• Amelia Zapata as Maid
• Alejandro Usigli as Professor
• Diego Luna as Alejandro Gonzalez Arias
• Fermín Martínez as Painter on Bus
• Loló Navarro as Nanny
• Lucia Bravo as Auditorium Model
• Margarita Sanz as Natalia Trotsky
• Patricia Reyes Spíndola as Matilde Kahlo
• Roger Rees as Guillermo Kahlo
• Valeria Golino as Lupe Marín
• Omar Rodriguez as André Breton
• Felipe Fulop as Jean Van Heijenoort
• Saffron Burrows as Gracie
• Chavela Vargas as La Pelona
• Lila Downs as Singer

Allusions[link]

• The passengers on the trolley Kahlo rides and that crashes with a bus are based on subjects in the painter's 1929 portrait, The Bus.
• The Brothers Quay-created stop motion animation sequence depicting the initial stages of Kahlo's recovery at the hospital after the trolley accident are inspired by the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead.
• The gown Valeria Golino wears at Kahlo's 1953 Mexican solo art exhibition is a replica of the dress her character Lupe Marín wore in Rivera's 1938 portrait of her.

Production[link]

Development[link]

The film version of Frida Kahlo's life was initially championed by Nancy Hardin, a former book editor and Hollywood-based literary agent, turned early "female studio executive", who, in the mid-1980s wished to "make the transition to independent producing."^[1] Learning of Hayden Herrara's biography of Kahlo, Hardin saw Kahlo's life as very contemporary, her "story... an emblematic tale for women torn between marriage and career."^[1] Optioning the book in 1988, Hardin "tried to sell it as an epic love story in the tradition of Out of Africa, attracting tentative interest from actresses such as Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange, but rejection from the film studios. As Kahlo's art gained prominence, however ("[i]n May 1990 one of Kahlo's self-portraits sold at Sotheby's for $1.5 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a Latin American painting"^[1]), Madonna "announced her plans to star in a film based on Frida's life", and Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions reportedly "envisioned a joint biography of Rivera and Kahlo."^[1]

In the spring of 1991, director Luis Valdez began production on a New Line feature about Frida Kahlo starring Laura San Giacomo in the lead. San Giacomo's casting was objected due to her non-Hispanic ethnicity, and New Line bowed to the protests, and left the then-titled Frida and Diego in August 1992 citing finances.^[1] Hardin's project found itself swamped by similar ones:

When I first tried to sell the project ... there was no interest because nobody had heard of Frida. A few years later, I heard the exact opposite – that there were too many Frida projects in development, and nobody wanted mine.^[1]

Valdez was contacted early on by the – then unknown in the US – Salma Hayek, who sent "her [promo] reel to the director and phoned his office", but was ultimately told she was then too young for the role.^[2] By 1993 Valdez had retitled the film The Two Fridas with San Giacomo and Ofelia Medina both playing the portraitist.^[3] Raúl Juliá was cast as Diego Rivera, but his death further delayed the movie. At the same time, Hardin approached HBO, and with "rising young development executive and producer" Lizz Speed (a former assistant to Sherry Lansing) intended to make a TVM, hopeful that Brian Gibson (director of "What's Love Got to Do With It, the story of Tina Turner" and The Josephine Baker Story) would direct.^[1] Casting difficulties proved insurmountable, but Speed joined Hardin in advocating the project, and after four years in development, the two took the project from HBO to Trimark and producer Jay Polstein (with assistant Darlene Caamaño). At Trimark, Salma Hayek became interested in the role, having "been fascinated by Kahlo's work from the time she was 13 or 14" – although not immediately a fan:

Hayek was so set on acting the role that she sought out Dolores Olmedo Patino, longtime-lover of Diego Rivera, and (after his death) administrator to the rights of Frida and Rivera's art, which Rivera had "willed ... to the Mexican people", bequeath[ing] the trust to Olmedo.^[2] Salma Hayek personally secured access to Kahlo's paintings from her, and began to assemble a supporting cast, approaching Alfred Molina for the role of Rivera in 1998. According to Molina, "She turned up backstage [of the Broadway play 'Art'] rather sheepishly and asked if I would like to play Diego". Molina went on to gain 35 pounds to play Rivera.^[4]

When producer Polstein left Trimark, however, the production faltered again, and Hayek approached Harvey Weinstein and Miramax, and the company purchased the film from Trimark; Julie Taymor came onto the project as Director. Meanwhile, in August 2000 it was announced that Jennifer Lopez would star in Valdez's take on the story, The Two Fridas, by then being produced by American Zoetrope.^[5] Nonetheless, it was Hayek and Miramax who began production in Spring, 2001 on what was to become simply titled Frida.^[2]

Release[link]

On August 29, 2002, the film made its world premiere opening the Venice International Film Festival. Frida's American premiere was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles on October 14 of that year. It had its Mexican premiere on November 8, 2002 at Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts.

Honors[link]

American Film Institute

Movies of the Year 2002, Official Selection

Rationale:

Frida is a movie about art that is a work of art in itself. The film's unique visual language takes us into an artist's head and reminds us that art is best enjoyed when it moves, breathes and is painted on a giant canvas, as only the movies can provide.

National Board of Review

• Top Ten Films

See also[link]

• Frida (soundtrack)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Archives of the Official site
• Frida at the Internet Movie Database
• Frida at Box Office Mojo
• Frida at Rotten Tomatoes

Frida Kahlo de Rivera (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954; born Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón)^[2][3] was a Mexican painter, born in Coyoacán,^[4] and is perhaps best known for her self-portraits.^[5]

Kahlo's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House. She gave her birth date as July 7, 1910, but her birth certificate shows July 6, 1907. Kahlo had allegedly wanted the year of her birth to coincide with the year of the beginning of the Mexican revolution so that her life would begin with the birth of modern Mexico. At the age of six, Frida developed polio, which caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other. It was to remain that way permanently.^[6] Her work has been celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition, and by feminists for its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.^[7]

Mexican culture and Amerindian cultural tradition are important in her work, which has been sometimes characterized as Naïve art or folk art.^[8] Her work has also been described as "surrealist", and in 1938 André Breton, principal initiator of the surrealist movement, described Kahlo's art as a "ribbon around a bomb".^[7]

Kahlo had a volatile marriage with the famous Mexican artist Diego Rivera. She suffered lifelong health problems, many of which derived from a traffic accident she experienced as a teenager. These issues are represented in her works, many of which are self-portraits of one sort or another. Kahlo suggested, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."^[9] She also stated, "I was born a bitch. I was born a painter."^[10]

Childhood and family[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in the house of her parents, known as La Casa Azul (The Blue House), in Coyoacán. At the time, Coyoacan was a small town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Her father, Guillermo Kahlo (1871–1941), was born Carl Wilhelm Kahlo in Pforzheim, Germany, the son of Jakob Heinrich Kahlo and Henriette Kaufmann. They moved from Hungary to Germany, where their son Wilhelm was born in 1872. Carl Wilhelm Kahlo traveled to Mexico during 1891 at the age of nineteen years and, upon his arrival, changed his German forename, Wilhelm, to its Spanish equivalent, Guillermo. Guillermo Kahlo has long been reported as being of Jewish ancestry,^[11] although a genealogical report compiled in 2006 stated that he was not Jewish. Meir Ronnen believes that Frida may have started that rumor to avoid being linked to the Nazi party.^[12]

Frida's mother, Matilde Calderón y Gonzalez, was a devout Roman Catholic of primarily Amerindian, as well as Spanish, ancestry.^[13] Frida's parents were married soon after the death of Guillermo's first wife, which occurred during the birth of her second child. Although their marriage was quite unhappy, Guillermo and Matilde had four daughters, with Frida being the third. She had two older half sisters who were raised in the same household. Frida remarked that she grew up in a world surrounded by females. However, during most of her life, Frida remained amicable with her father.

The Mexican Revolution began during 1910, when Kahlo was three years old. Kahlo later claimed that she was born in 1910, allegedly so that people would associate her with the revolution. In her writings, she recalled that her mother would usher her and her sisters inside the house as gunfire echoed in the streets of her hometown.

Kahlo contracted polio at age six, which left her right leg thinner than the left, which she disguised by wearing long, colorful skirts. It has been conjectured that she also suffered from spina bifida, a congenital disease that could have affected both spinal and leg development.^[14] As a girl, she participated in boxing and other sports. In 1922, Kahlo was enrolled in the Preparatoria, one of Mexico's premier schools, where she was one of only thirty-five girls. Kahlo joined a clique at the school and became enamored of the strongest personality of it, Alejandro Gómez Arias. During this period, Kahlo also witnessed violent armed struggles in the streets of Mexico City as the Mexican Revolution continued.

On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was riding in a bus that collided with a trolley car. She suffered serious injuries as a result of the accident, including a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus, which compromised her reproductive capacity.

The accident left her in a great deal of pain while she spent three months recovering in a full body cast. Although she recovered from her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, she had relapses of extreme pain for the remainder of her life. The pain was intense and often left her confined to a hospital or bedridden for months at a time. She had as many as thirty-five operations as a result of the accident, mainly on her back, her right leg, and her right foot. The injuries also prevented Kahlo from having a child because of the medical complications and permanent damage. Though she conceived three times, all her pregnancies had to be terminated.^[15]

Career as painter[link]

Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera during 1932, in a photograph by Carl Van Vechten

After the accident, Kahlo neglected the study of medicine to begin a painting career. She painted to occupy her time during her temporary immobilization. Her self-portraits were a dominant part of her life when she was immobile for three months after her accident. Kahlo once said, "I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best."^[9]

Her mother had a special easel made for her so she could paint in bed, and her father lent her his box of oil paints and some brushes.^[16]

Drawn from personal experiences, including her marriage, her miscarriages, and her numerous operations, Kahlo's works are often characterized by their suggestions of pain.

Of her 143 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."^{[citation needed]}

Diego Rivera had a great influence on Frida’s painting style. Frida had always admired Diego and his work. She first approached Diego in the Public Ministry of Education, where he had been working on a mural in 1927. She showed him four of her paintings, and asked whether he considered her gifted. Diego was impressed and said, “You got talent.” After that, he became a frequent welcomed guest at Frida’s house. He gave her many insights about her artwork while still leaving her space to explore herself. There is no doubt that the positive and encouraging comments made by Diego strengthened Frida’s wish to pursue a career as an artist.^[17]

Kahlo was also influenced by indigenous Mexican culture, which is apparent in her use of bright colors, dramatic symbolism and primitive style. She frequently included the symbolic monkey. In Mexican mythology, monkeys are symbols of lust, but Kahlo portrayed them as tender and protective symbols. Christian and Jewish themes are often depicted in her work.^[18]

She combined elements of the classic religious Mexican tradition with surrealist renderings. Kahlo created a few drawings of "portraits," but unlike her paintings, they were more abstract. She did one of her husband, Diego Rivera,^[19] and of herself.^[20] At the invitation of André Breton, she went to France during 1939 and was featured at an exhibition of her paintings in Paris. The Louvre bought one of her paintings, The Frame, which was displayed at the exhibit. This was the first work by a twentieth century Mexican artist that was purchased by the renowned museum.

Marriage[link]

Malú Block (left), Frida Kahlo (center), and Diego Rivera were photographed in Manhattan by Carl Van Vechten in 1932 while Rivera was working on a commissioned mural in Rockefeller Center

As a young artist, Kahlo communicated with the Mexican painter, Diego Rivera, whose work she admired, asking him for advice about pursuing art as a career. He recognized her talent.^[21] He encouraged her artistic development and also began an intimate relationship with Frida. They were married in 1929, despite the disapproval of Frida's mother.

Their marriage was often troubled. Kahlo and Rivera both had irritable temperaments and numerous extramarital affairs. The bisexual Kahlo had affairs with both men and women, including Isamu Noguchi and Josephine Baker;^[3] Rivera knew of and tolerated her relationships with women, but her relationships with men made him jealous. For her part, Kahlo was furious when she learned that Rivera had an affair with her younger sister, Cristina. The couple divorced in November 1939, but remarried in December 1940. Their second marriage was as troubled as the first. Their living quarters were often separate, although sometimes adjacent.^[22]