Frida
The words of Frida Kahlo herself are a crucial element of Carla Gutiérrez’s portrait of the legendary Mexican painter.
This is not the first film about the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo who lived from 1907 to 1954 and is now as famous as she ever was. Nevertheless, this documentary by Carla Gutiérrez, here making her directorial debut but not relinquishing her earlier established role as an editor, offers something new. Frida follows in the footsteps of such documentaries as Loving Highsmith and Mad About the Boy: The Noël Coward Story in drawing extensively on the actual words of their subjects. Thus it is that on this film’s soundtrack (the words being mainly in Spanish with subtitles) we have Fernanda Echevarria del Rivero speaking for Frida and doing it very effectively indeed. Gutiérrez has turned to what her subject said in printed interviews and in what she wrote in essays as well using her illustrated diaries, the latter proving the most personal of all. They are clearly presented uncensored (and that's despite the surprisingly mild 12A certificate) and they help us to understand the person that Frida was.
Frida’s words may dominate here but there are also voiced quotations from many others who played a part in her life including the artist Diego Rivera whom she married twice, her friend Lucile Blanch and the writer André Breton who encouraged her to come to Paris following a solo exhibition in New York in 1938. On two fronts Gutiérrez’s film is very good indeed, these being Frida’s life which is presented basically in chronological order and her character. Even in her school days Frida was already a rebel standing out against her religious mother and as a young woman was ready to embrace communism in which she saw the spirit of Zapata’s Mexican revolution. Unabashed in her use of strong language and with a potent sex drive, she was never one to hold back. She brought her paintings to Diego Rivera, married him despite calling him "toad face" and travelled with him to New York City in 1931. There she was highly critical of what she saw of the rich just as at the end of the decade she would disrespect many French intellects including by then Breton who sought to categorise her painting as surrealist (she did not agree and said so).
Hearing Frida’s own comments made without reticence provides an effective insight into all aspects of her life including the lifelong pain caused by her involvement in a bus crash at the age of eighteen, her miscarriage during her first marriage to Rivera and her frank acknowledgement of her many affairs with both men and women. Rivera was no less unfaithful even taking her sister Cristina as a lover at one point, yet the couple’s own love persisted leading eventually to remarriage albeit strictly on Frida's terms. Her words also make evident the need to paint that always dominated her life, but it is in its portrayal of Frida’s paintings that this film takes what for me - if not necessarily for all - will be a misstep. In showing her art works – so many of them self-portraits – Gutiérrez has opted to use digital recreations and then to elaborate them with touches of animation (she also has an unnecessary urge to add splashes of colour from time to time when featuring old black-and-white archive footage). The result is certainly colourful but playing around with the art left by your subject strikes me as regrettable. It's that element that makes me critical of the film although I can recognise that its many insights will render it a work that is likely to fascinate those who admire Frida Kahlo as an artist and also as a woman intent on living life on her own terms.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring the voices of Fernanda Echevarria Del Rivero, Jorge Richards, Lindsay Conklin, Manuel Cruz Vivas, Maya Luna, Tyler Beerley, César Martínez, Pablo Alarson, Roberto Cavazos, Jeanne Albanese.
Dir Carla Gutiérrez, Pro Sara Bernstein, Katia Maguire, Justin Wilkes, Loren Hammonds and Alexandra Johnes, Art Dir Renata Galindo Prieto, Ed Carla Gutierrez, Music Victor Hernandez Stumpfhauser, Animation Dir Sofa Inés Cázares Lira.
Imagine Documentaries/Storyville Films/Time Studios-Met Film.
87 mins. USA/Mexico. 2024. UK Rel: 8 March 2024. US Rel: 15 March 2024. Cert. 12A.