Frida

For other uses, see Frida (disambiguation).

Frida
Promotional poster
Directed by	Julie Taymor
Produced by	Sarah Green Salma Hayek Jay Polstein
Screenplay by	Clancy Sigal Diane Lake Gregory Nava Anna Thomas
Based on	Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera
Starring	Salma Hayek Alfred Molina Antonio Banderas
Music by	Elliot Goldenthal
Cinematography	Rodrigo Prieto
Editing by	Françoise Bonnot
Studio	Ventanarosa
Distributed by	Miramax Films
Release date(s)	August 29, 2002 (2002-08-29)
Running time	123 minutes
Country	Canada Mexico United States
Language	English Spanish French Russian
Budget	$12 million
Box office	$25,885,000 (US-Canada) $30,413,474 (rest of world) $56,298,474 (total)

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

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

• 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

• 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

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." 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." 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"), 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."

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. 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.

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. By 1993 Valdez had retitled the film The Two Fridas with San Giacomo and Ofelia Medina both playing the portraitist. 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. 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:

“

At that age I did not like her work ... I found it ugly and grotesque. But something intrigued me, and the more I learned, the more I started to appreciate her work. There was a lot of passion and depth. Some people see only pain, but I also see irony and humor. I think what draws me to her is what Diego saw in her. She was a fighter. Many things could have diminished her spirit, like the accident or Diego's infidelities. But she wasn't crushed by anything.

”

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. 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.

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. 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 house and the San Ildefonso National Preparatory School. Replicas of the Casa Azul (Kahlo's Coyoacán house) and the RCA Building's lobby were built at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City and shot in Stage 4 there.

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

Award	Category	Recipient	Result
Academy Awards	Best Actress in a Leading Role	Salma Hayek	Nominated
	Best Art Direction	Felipe Fernández del Paso, Hania Robledo	Nominated
	Best Costume Design	Julie Weiss	Nominated
	Best Makeup	John E. Jackson, Beatriz De Alba	Won
	Best Original Score	Elliot Goldenthal	Won
	Best Original Song ("Burn It Blue")	Julie Taymor, Elliot Goldenthal	Nominated
Golden Globes	Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama	Salma Hayek	Nominated
	Best Original Score	Elliot Goldenthal	Won
BAFTA Awards	Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role	Salma Hayek	Nominated
	Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role	Alfred Molina	Nominated
	Best Costume Design	Julie Weiss	Nominated
	Best Make Up/Hair	Judy Chin, Beatriz De Alba, John E. Jackson, Regina Reyes	Won
Screen Actors Guild Awards	Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role	Salma Hayek	Nominated
	Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role	Alfred Molina	Nominated

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

• Frida (soundtrack)

External links

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