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‘Frida’ Review: Popular Mexican Painter Speaks for Herself in Doc Drawn From Kahlo’s Diaries
Carla Gutiérrez assembles a visceral portrait of Frida Kahlo from the artist’s own writings, archival footage and animated versions of her paintings.
Told mostly in Spanish, Gutiérrez’s “Frida” succinctly encompasses her entire life and career linearly with the notable feature that its poignant, first-person insight was mined directly from Kahlo’s own writing, including her illustrated diary. Tasked with voicing Frida, performer Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero summons the woman’s defiant essence, giving precise intonation to each sentence — sometimes cheeky, others solemn — to convincingly incarnate Kahlo’s personality solely with words that accompany the visual components, including segments of previously unseen archival footage. There’s a raw, in-the-moment quality to her line delivery and to the text itself that often gives us the impression of having Kahlo adding live commentary to each of the most consequential moments of her life: the life-altering accident, her love-hate romance with promiscuous Diego Rivera, their trips to New York and Detroit (which she did not enjoy), her crushing miscarriage and her torrid affair with Soviet politician Leon Trotsky.
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