The film opens on the spectacularly blue painted home of Frida Kahlo (which is now a museum). She is being carried out in her four poster bed to a vehicle outside. The camera focuses on her face and suddenly we are back in 1922 when she was still a student. Along with her fellow male students, she spies on the painter Diego Rivera as he paints a mural. It’s clear from this scene that Diego is a philanderer, a lover of women who is incapable of fidelity. Later, Frida and her lover Alejandro run to catch a trolley bus. (In reality this took place in 1925 but the time lapse is not really documented in the film.) They almost miss it but catch it just in time. It’s a fateful moment, because this is the bus which will crash, leaving Frida with devastating injuries and a handrail that pierces her body through her vagina and back. Director Taymor incorporates not only Frida’s paintings into the film, in tableaux that come to life, but also elements of Mexican culture and belief. A nightmarish animation scene follows the accident involving skeleton doctors discussing Frida’s injuries. Frida wakes up in a hospital bed. When she returns home, she is confined to bed in a body cast. Her life is changed forever. Alejandro, who escaped the accident unharmed, leaves her for Europe.

Frida Kahlo did not set out to be an artist, but she wanted to become a “self-sufficient cripple,” and encouraged by her family, she took up painting. As well as self-portraits, she painted members of her family. Eventually, through sheer determination, she got back on her feet. It’s at this point in the film that she pays a visit to Diego Rivera. She wants his opinion on her work. Not compliments, but the truth, because she has to find a way to earn a living, and she doesn’t want to waste her time on painting if she isn’t good enough. Rivera sees her talent, and they soon become lovers. Later they marry, and it’s a turbulent match that sees Rivera cheating on her with one woman after another. But she too has affairs, with women as well as men. Leon Trotsky was her most famous lover.

When Diego is invited to America, Frida accompanies him. Taymor uses drawings and photographs of the period as a stand in for the sights of New York. She also casts Diego as a kind of fantasy King Kong, out to conquer New York. Diego has been commissioned to paint a mural, meant to depict the ordinary workers, but it soon features Vladimir Lenin. His refusal to remove Lenin from the mural he’s painting at the Rockefeller Centre leads to his dismissal and the destruction of his work. He has fallen from glory, and Taymor depicts this humorously in another fantasy sequence where Diego as King Kong falls from the top of the Empire State building.

Frida becomes pregnant, but loses the baby. The experience is depicted in a painting. The sight of Frida in the hospital bed with her dead foetus in a jar, drawing it intently, is an example of her wilful determination to confront pain and channel it into her art.

Both Frida and Diego are Communists, and when Leon Trotsky is forced to seek refuge in Mexico, he and his wife take up residence in Frida’s home. The house is invaded by security men. Trotsky’s life is constantly in danger. In the course of their stay, Trotsky and Frida become lovers, but Trotsky’s wife finds out and the couple leave. Some time later, Trotsky is assassinated.

Although Frida agreed to marry Diego knowing that he would not be faithful to her, when he cheats on her with her sister, it appears to be the last straw. She and Diego divorce. It is after the trip to New York that Frida really comes into her own as a painter. As time goes on, however, Frida’s health becomes worse. Forced to wear body casts, and with secondary health problems like gangrene of the foot, and bronchitis, she becomes increasingly bed-ridden. Taymor hints at Frida’s drug addiction by leaving the evidence lying around the sets. Diego returns to Frida and asks to marry her again. The opening scenes of the film are in fact the end of Frida’s life. Ordered to stay home when her first exhibition in Mexico is on, Frida promises her doctor that she will not leave her bed. Instead, her bed is carried to the gallery with Frida inside.

Salma Hayek plays Frida with passion and feeling, portraying Frida’s vulnerabilities and her strength. Alfred Molina is a wonderful Diego Rivera, and the King Kong fantasy sequences perfectly illustrate his character. There are touches of humour throughout the film. It would be a mistake to view Frida Kahlo’s life as simply one of pain. As the film makes clear, Frida had a sense of humour about her life, and was determined to make the most of things. The left-wing politics of the Mexican characters are shown honestly as a concern for the poor and the workers. During her visit to America, Frida sees that country as a place where the rich drink champagne and the poor are ignored. The political and cultural clash between Mexico and the United States is best illustrated in the furore over Diego’s mural with its inclusion of Lenin.

Frida Kahlo was not only a beautiful woman, she was also gender ambiguous at times. In one family group portrait she appears dressed as a young man and this scene is re-enacted in the film. Kahlo’s self-portraits exaggerated her moustache. Photographs show her as more feminine. In her youth, she favoured western clothes, but later changed to the costumes of her native Mexico. These costumes are beautifully depicted throughout the film. In fact, this is a visually stunning film. Saturated with colour at times, though colour is also digitally removed from the frames at critical moments, director Julie Taymor embraces the painterly eye of her subject and the colourful landscape and interiors of Mexico. Although the film has the usual Hollywood cameo roles, designed to increase its marketability, most of the roles are occupied by Mexican and other Latin American actors. Antonio Banderas appears briefly, as does Edward Norton as Nelson Rockefeller. Ashley Judd plays Tina Modotti, a woman whose life was every bit as interesting as Frida’s. In fact, though it is not relevant to the film, Modotti was a significant photographer who was involved with, among other people, Edward Weston. Geoffrey Rush puts in a sympathetic performance as Leon Trotsky.

If there are criticisms to be made of the film, it’s in the treatment of facts and dates. Time is inevitably telescoped. Hayek’s changing hair lengths act as a marker of passing time. America is reduced to New York in the film, when in actual fact, Frida and Diego visited other parts of the country, and Detroit was a particularly important location for them since Diego associated the city with the American proletariat. In Detroit, he ran into trouble over the content of the frescos he was painting there, resulting in a storm of protest from religious people and conservatives, but workers rose up to support him and a group took it upon themselves to protect his murals. This does not appear in the film. Neither does Frida and Diego’s later support for Stalin. Writing in her biography, “Frida,” Hayden Herrera writes:

Years after Frida and Diego died, friends remembered them as “sacred monsters.” Their escapades and eccentricities were beyond the petty censurings of ordinary morality: not simply condoned, they were treasured and mythologized. As for being “monsters,” the Riveras could harbour Trotksy, paint paeans to Stalin, build pagan temples, wave pistols, boast of eating human flesh, and carry on in their marriage with the vast imperiousness of Olympian deities.

Frida,’ the film, successfully captures the essence of Frida Kahlo and her life, and comes with a wonderful soundtrack that includes Mexican music and some great singing by Lila Downs who also appears. Those who want to investigate Frida more closely are advised to read a biography. Hayden Herrera’s biography is an excellent chronicle of her life, and there’s also Herrera’s ‘Frida Kahlo: The Paintings’ which includes much information about her life as well as the paintings themselves, in full colour, together with Herrera’s analysis of their relevance and meaning to Frida and her life. Frida’s illustrated diary is also available.