Salma Hayek Pinault

Alfred Molina

Mía Maestro

Patricia Reyes Spíndola

Diego Luna

Roger Rees

Ashley Judd

Antonio Banderas

Edward Norton

Saffron Burrows

Geoffrey Rush

Margarita Sanz

Omar Rodríguez

Lila Downs

Valeria Golino

Karine Plantadit

Didi Conn

Ivana Sejenovich

Lucia Bravo

Alejandro Usigli

Amelia Zapata

Fermín Martínez

Loló Navarro

Roberto Medina

Martha Claudia Moreno

Bernardo Trujillo

Hayden Herrera

Clancy Sigal

Roberto Sneider

Diane Lake

Sarah Green

Gregory Nava

Lizz Speed

Elliot Goldenthal

Françoise Bonnot

Felipe Fernández del Paso

Anna Thomas

Jay Polstein

Nancy Hardin

Julie Taymor

Lindsay Flickinger

Hania Robledo

Rodrigo Prieto

Julie Weiss

Alyson Latz

Raúl Sarmiento

Jay Aroesty

Mark Gill

Maryann Marchetti

Ann Ruark

Becky Glupczynski

Mark Amin

León Sandoval

Judy Chin

Amy Slotnick

Miguel Cervantes

Harvey Weinstein

Jill Messick

Alida Castelan

Santiago Núñez

Erwin H. Kupitz

Blake Leyh

Robert Fernandez

Arnold Finkelstein

Marko Costanzo

Rafael Cuervo

Jamie Baker

Bob Allen

Stacy Perskie

Will Ralston

Gerardo Moreno

Benjamin Cheah

Margaret Rose Perenchio

Adrian Grünberg

Matthew W. Mungle

George A. Lara

Laura Civiello

Deborah Wallach

Jay Peck

Kimberly R. McCord-Wilson

Glenfield Payne

Paul Zydel

Bob Weinstein

Thomas Kodros

Peter Sorel

Beatrice De Alba

Kathy Nelson

Sarah Botstein

Janna DeLury

Curtis Roush

Gerardo Manjarrez

Regina Reyes

John E. Jackson

Brian Gibson

Drama

Romance

Frida

Miramax

Margaret Rose Perenchio Productions

Ventanarosa

Lionsgate

Canada

Mexico

United States of America

Filipe Manuel Neto

**A good biographical film about one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century.**

I'm not a deep connoisseur of Mexican painting, but I don't think I'm saying heresy if I consider Frida Kahlo the most international and well-known artist in the country, the most notable of Mexican painters. She was considered a surrealist, but she didn't really agree with that because she didn't paint dreams. In fact, I agree with the artist: what she left us, in powerful and dramatic canvases, is a portrait of her life, what she lived, felt and saw.

Kahlo's paintings look simple. She was not an academic, coming out of a very expensive and elegant school. She painted with feeling, with an art that was her own, not a copy of others, nor an attempt to follow any school or any master. She painted with simplicity, emotion and drama, in what we can call a “naïf style”. She was married, in a very tempestuous relationship, to the painter Diego Rivera, but he, although more technically perfect, is not as good as she is because he lacks in emotion and sincerity what he has left in political activism. In fact, what I don't like about Rivera's art is the constant apology for communist ideas. Art and propaganda are different things, although they can be harmonized.

The film, directed in a very elegant and competent way by Julie Taymor, invites us to know the artist's life from her youth until her death. It begins shortly before she suffers the accident that will weaken her for the rest of her life (something the film does not tell us – and it is a pity – is that she had polio as a child). The film focuses on her relationship with Rivera and, later, on her affair with the exiled Leon Trotsky. However, and as the film makes clear, the artist was bisexual and had a lot of extramarital relationships with men and women, like her husband, who had a variety of lovers.

I dare say that this is one of the most solid cinematographic works of Salma Hayek's career so far. The actress gave us a powerful, intense and personality-filled performance. Beside her, Alfred Molina also gives us a strong and charismatic work. Geoffrey Rush, an actor who rarely lets us down, was not so good as the disgraced Russian revolutionary. I found it unconvincing, and the romantic relationship with Kahlo sounds artificial, more like a whim than a powerful attraction between characters. The film also has cameos by António Banderas, Edward Norton and others, but they were misused and accessories.

Technically, the highlight goes to the cinematography, crafted with a lot of creativity: I cannot fail to highlight, for example, the scenes in the Aztec ruins, or that scene where Kahlo is treated in the hospital, with a graphic animation that remembers the artist's paintings. The insertion of the paintings is very well executed, so that we can clearly understand the connection between Kahlo's art and life. The soundtrack, with various themes alluding to traditional Mexican music, does an excellent job, and the recreation of historical times and environments was also done with great care and discretion.

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Frida | Official Trailer (HD) - Salma Hayek, Antonio Banderas, Alfred Molina | MIRAMAX