*In Honor Of The Frida Kahlo Exhibit At The Museum Of Fine Arts In Boston- An Exotic Flower- Frida Kahlo
DVD REVIEW
By Leslie Dumont
Frida, Salma Hayek, 2002
I recently read an article in the New York Review of Books (May 15, 2008) analyzing the work of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo that reminded me how much I liked this film, especially the performance by Ms. Hayek (who received an Oscar nomination for her efforts and who bore a striking resemblance to Frida in the film). The gist of the article, which included some biographical detail that is also explored here (her various severe mental and physical problems, his stormy relationship with her fellow artist and husband the world famous muralist Diego Rivera, her bisexuality), is that while much of Kahlo's artistic work reflected her strong psychic attachment to Mexico it also placed her squarely in the camp of naturalist painters.
I am not enough of an art devotee to make comment on that above mentioned critique, however, from the several paintings of Kahlo’s that I have seen I would argue a little more toward the surrealist school that virtually every Mexican artist in the 1920’s and 1930’s drew from as they created their work. But enough of that argument for now. This film, in its own round about way, by presenting the various psychic pains (failure to have the children she desperately wanted, her topsy- turvy relationship with Rivera as she tries to make her own space in the art world and the underlying tensions of combining politics and artistic endeavor) gives a fairly decent gloss, for a commercial film, on the trials and tribulations of being a Mexican woman artist in the early part of the 20th century.
Of course, for this political junkie and admirer of Leon Trotsky the names Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera conjure up political connections as much as art. One of the strands working its way through the film is this couple’s relationship with the exiled Trotsky when President Cardenas granted him a visa in 1937. All sources that I have read and photographs that I have seen have mentioned that Trotsky was smitten with Frida’s exotic beauty (to the furor of his companion, Natalia). However, it was rather startling to watch the episode where Trotsky jumps into bed with Ms. Kahlo. I have noted elsewhere that the old time revolutionaries, especially the Russians, were extremely reticent about discussing personal sexual matters in their memoirs and autobiographies. Trotsky was no exception. Is that scene merely cinematic license or was Trotsky really just a dirty old man? You decide. I will concentrate of his political wisdom. And Frida’s strangely exotic paintings.
DVD REVIEW
By Leslie Dumont
Frida, Salma Hayek, 2002
I recently read an article in the New York Review of Books (May 15, 2008) analyzing the work of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo that reminded me how much I liked this film, especially the performance by Ms. Hayek (who received an Oscar nomination for her efforts and who bore a striking resemblance to Frida in the film). The gist of the article, which included some biographical detail that is also explored here (her various severe mental and physical problems, his stormy relationship with her fellow artist and husband the world famous muralist Diego Rivera, her bisexuality), is that while much of Kahlo's artistic work reflected her strong psychic attachment to Mexico it also placed her squarely in the camp of naturalist painters.
I am not enough of an art devotee to make comment on that above mentioned critique, however, from the several paintings of Kahlo’s that I have seen I would argue a little more toward the surrealist school that virtually every Mexican artist in the 1920’s and 1930’s drew from as they created their work. But enough of that argument for now. This film, in its own round about way, by presenting the various psychic pains (failure to have the children she desperately wanted, her topsy- turvy relationship with Rivera as she tries to make her own space in the art world and the underlying tensions of combining politics and artistic endeavor) gives a fairly decent gloss, for a commercial film, on the trials and tribulations of being a Mexican woman artist in the early part of the 20th century.
Of course, for this political junkie and admirer of Leon Trotsky the names Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera conjure up political connections as much as art. One of the strands working its way through the film is this couple’s relationship with the exiled Trotsky when President Cardenas granted him a visa in 1937. All sources that I have read and photographs that I have seen have mentioned that Trotsky was smitten with Frida’s exotic beauty (to the furor of his companion, Natalia). However, it was rather startling to watch the episode where Trotsky jumps into bed with Ms. Kahlo. I have noted elsewhere that the old time revolutionaries, especially the Russians, were extremely reticent about discussing personal sexual matters in their memoirs and autobiographies. Trotsky was no exception. Is that scene merely cinematic license or was Trotsky really just a dirty old man? You decide. I will concentrate of his political wisdom. And Frida’s strangely exotic paintings.
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