Everything about Frida totally explained
Frida is a 2002 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 (receipient:
Elliot Goldenthal).
Plot
The
traumatic accident Frida Kahlo suffered at the age of 18 when a car trolley collided with a bus is depicted in
Frida. 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. 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.
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; 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, who has been granted
political asylum in Mexico. She and Trotsky begin an affair which forces the married Trotsky to leave the safety of her
Coyoacan 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
assassinated. Rivera is temporarily a suspect and Kahlo is incarcerated in his place when he isn't found. Rivera helps get her released.
Kahlo has her toes removed when they grow
gangrene. Rivera asks her to remarry him and she agrees. Her health worsens, including the amputation of a leg, and she ultimately dies after finally having a
solo exhibition of her paintings in Mexico.
Allusions
- 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 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.
Accuracy
In the film, the nude woman Rivera is painting in the mural Creation was actually posed for by his wife Lupe Marín and not the unknown auditorium model as depicted. In the film, when Marín confronts Rivera about his infidelities, said model is present.
As portrayed in the film Diego painted the mural An Abundant Earth after marrying Kahlo. Actually, he completed this while still married to his previous wife, Marín. The nude woman he used as a subject in one of the panels in the mural was Tina Modotti and not an unknown model he's an affair with, as also portrayed in the film.
In the film, Kahlo miscarries in New York City; in reality this took place in Detroit.
As depicted in the film, Frida paints Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair immediately after discovering Diego's affair with her sister Cristina Kahlo. The affair ended in 1934 but the portrait wasn't actually painted until 1940. The recording of the song Paloma Negra, which plays in the sequence following Frida's discovery of the affair, is from 1958.
Cast
Salma Hayek - Frida Kahlo
Alfred Molina - Diego Rivera
Geoffrey Rush - Leon Trotsky
Mía Maestro - Cristina Kahlo
Ashley Judd - Tina Modotti
Antonio Banderas - David Alfaro Siqueiros
Edward Norton - Nelson Rockefeller
Amelia Zapata - Maid
Alejandro Usigli - Professor
Diego Luna - Alejandro Gonzalez Arias
Fermín Martínez - Painter on Bus
Loló Navarro - Nanny
Lucia Bravo - Auditorium Model
Margarita Sanz - Natalia Trotsky
Patricia Reyes Spíndola - Matilde Kahlo
Roger Rees - Guillermo Kahlo
Valeria Golino - Lupe Marín
Omar Rodriquez - André Breton
Felipe Fulop - Jean van Heijenoort
Saffron Burrows - Gracie
Chavela Vargas - La Pelona
Lila Downs - Singer
Production
Development
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." 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." Raul Julia 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.
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. 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. Nonetheless, it was Hayek and Miramax who began production in Spring, 2001 on what was to become simply titled Frida.
Filming
Filming took place from April 7 through June 2001 and was shot entirely in Mexico.
Among the on location places shot were three UNESCO world heritage sites: Teotihuacan, Xochimilco, and Puebla's historic centre. Other on location sites include Rivera and Kahlo's Juan O'Gorman designed San Ángel studio home and the San Idelfonso National Preparatory School. Replicas of Casa Azul (Kahlo's Coyacan home) and RCA Building's lobby were built at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City and shot in Stage 4 of said studios.
For scenes depicting Diego completing a mural, crew members stretched a canvas across a scaffold placed in front of the painter's actual artwork. This "makeshift 'mural'" included sketched outlines and painted portions. The optical "illusion" of a work in progress was achieved through the canvas "flattened" by a camera shooting from a distance and therefore "blending" the edges into the fixed mural.
Salma Hayek wore over fifty costumes as Frida. Some pieces were purchased from street vendors in Mexico City.
Release
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
American Film Institute
Movies of the Year 2002, Official Selection
Rationale:FRIDA is a movie about art that's 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
Further Information
Get more info on 'Frida'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://frida.totallyexplained.com">Frida Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
