Frida (2024): A Review

FRIDA

What more is there to say about Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter who has become an iconic figure long after her death? There has been a slew of films, and documentaries and merchandising built around Kahlo. There are even young girls named after her. What is there new that one can find? Well, Frida, the newest documentary on Kahlo, takes the novel approach of letting Frida speak for herself, so to speak. Using her own journal entries and artwork, Frida explores her life both external and internal. 

Frida Kahlo was always rebellious. The daughter of an atheist father and a deeply Catholic mother, Frida joined the Cachuchas (the Caps or Hatted Ones) as the lone female among the miscreants of her high-end school. Then came the horrific bus accident in 1925 that left her in immense pain physically and psychologically. Two years later, she embraced Communism, which was not an eccentricity in avant-garde Mexico City.

Then came muralist Diego Rivera. In this young girl, Diego found an artist of immense skill. He also found someone who would not defer to him. He actually deferred to her, and her "Frog Face" soon became his lover and later husband. As he ascended the artistic heights, down to a one-man show in New York, "Mrs. Rivera" found herself being both a companion and a minor celebrity in her own right. 

Despite their ardor for each other, they were not blind to their infidelities. Diego's string of mistresses and liaisons were not a particular bother to either, but Diego was very jealous whenever Frida took a lover, down to threatening sculptor Isamu Noguchi, one of Frida's lovers. Whether out of spite or gross irresponsibility, Diego had an affair with Frida's beloved sister Cristina. This was the breaking point for Kahlo, who promptly left Diego. She did soon reconcile with Cristina but divorced her Frog Face.

Soon, however, Frida began attracting attention of a different sort, becoming the toast of the New York art world. Paris, however, was a different matter. She found a frenemy in Surrealist writer Andre Breton, who championed her work while being inept in promoting her. Despite herself, she remarried Diego but never had sexual relations with him again. Reaching a certain contentment, her body finally began betraying her, dying in 1954 at the age of 47. 

Frida Kahlo is one of the most chronicled and documented artists of the Twentieth Century, or so it appears to be. She certainly has become iconic, so again, why delve back into more of her? Carla Gutierrez's film takes an approach that has been dabbled with in other Kahlo documentaries like The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo in using Kahlo's own words to tell her story. Gutierrez, though, used almost nothing but Kahlo's words in Frida. Apart from the words of some of her lovers, all men, the text is all from Frida's journals, letters and interviews. We know it is someone else as Frida puts their names on the screen, along with an accompanying image or Kahlo painting of them. The film also shows what they were at the time someone else spoke. Alejandro Gomez Arias, for example, is first billed as a "Classmate", then "Boyfriend", finally "Friend", if memory serves right. 

Frida is as close as one will get to hearing from Kahlo herself outside of a seance. Some of her observations are quite optimistic given her tumultuous life. "Love is the foundation of all life," she observes. There is at times, something almost joyful in her, a love of life that her physical and emotional troubles cannot squash. 

Other times, though, we see the sarcastic side of the artist. To be fair, Kahlo had every right to be enraged at Breton's wild mismanagement of her Parisian one-woman show. She has nothing but contempt for the Paris art world, which she finds pretentious and vapid and unwelcoming. To have her artwork exhibited with the tchotchkes that Breton purchased at a Mexican flea market enrages her. 

Finally, we see the vulnerable woman behind the legend. "I've adapted to his style," Frida quietly observes when writing about the influence Rivera had on her artistic manner. In her first romance with Arias, she muses, "I'm attracted to intelligent people. I choose those I feel are superior to me," a surprising revelation for someone held as an icon of feminist independence. The bus accident is described in surprisingly quiet terms. "It wasn't violent, but silent, slow," she observes. It is impossible to fully know how horrific and traumatic this moment was for Kahlo, but the still manner with which she wrote on it makes it all the more shocking. 

Frida takes a different tack when looking on her artwork. Rather than making them static, Frida choses to animate them, bringing them to life. I understand that some viewers dislike this method, thinking that it takes away from Kahlo's unique style and drawing attention to the animated style. Others find the animation clever, opening up the work. I fall more on the latter side. What I am surprised people have not comment on more is how Frida selectively adds color to archival footage, making reality more surreal in the Kahlo style. 

I found this decision clever, adding to the choice to make Frida more on how Kahlo looked at the world than on how the world actually looked. 

Frida delves into that mix of artistic freedom and personal courage. Like other Kahlo-centric projects, that pesky adoration of figures like Stalin and Mao is not touched on. Trotsky is a slightly different matter. I suppose there is a difference between sex and admiration. I also think some of the translations would not be how I would have translated the words (Frida is in Spanish, though appropriately subtitled). As I speak and understand Spanish, I had no trouble following the various words from Kahlo, Arias, Rivera and others. I do think that even non-Spanish speakers will enjoy two songs featured in Frida: En Cantos by Natalia Lafourcade and Amores by Marissa Mur and Luis Jimenez, the latter which closes the film. 

As a side note, En Cantos can serve as a pun in Spanish. En Cantos (two words) translates to "In Songs", while "Encantos" (one word) can be "enchantments" or "delights".

Frida is a strong introduction through the thoughts and art of this now-legendary Mexican figure. "What is joy? The creation born of discovery", Kahlo observes. Frida Kahlo is an icon to many. Frida does her right.

DECISION: B+