There’s an odd tension and dichotomy coursing throughout the new documentary, “Frida,” an intimacy meets a standard-issue form: a lyrical, magical quality next to something just maybe too safely chronological for its own good. Carla Gutierrez’s new documentary, her directorial debut, is well-meaning and has a clear devotion and affection for her subject, the legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, but as a primarily told cradle-to-grave story, it is doggedly linear and therefore often feels a little familiar.
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“Frida” does have an ace up its sleeve that differentiates it from other standard operating procedure documentaries; it is told from Kahlo’s perspective. Culled from her famous diary— illustrated to the hilt with her art—revealing letters, essays, and print interviews—“Frida” unfolds as if it’s told through her eyes.
But visually and in its shape, “Frida” is a little drab with two modes, one of which is a little dry. The first form is mostly black-and-white archival photos—personal ones, ones from print media, etc.— which the camera seems to hypnotically zoom in on or camera pan slightly, the same effect that happens when you hit the randomizer button on your personal home photos app (you can see the impact briefly here).
The second style, which is much more expressive and dynamic—essentially new animated sequences rendered to match the surrealist bravura of Kahlo’s art— is much more successful. And it’s admirably only used sparingly, perhaps only in the sections filled with the most heartache, tragedy, and pain, an excellent thematic technique. But compared to the more static, rectilinear method of historical photos or footage juxtaposed with personal reflections of Kalo’s difficult life, the brief effervescent elements of the doc often leave you wanting for more formal chutzpah.
Kahlo’s story is fascinating, a hard, rags-to-riches tale that’s still full of great sorrow, anguish, and physical and psychically scarring agony—she was involved in a devastating bus and streetcar accident at the age of 18, the wounds of which scarred eternally. That dolor seemingly marked and inspired her life, artistically and otherwise; her paintings were always uncompromisingly intense and passionate, with ideas of suffering, resilience, and recovery running through the work. Her love and sex life were intense, too, her marriage and divorce from muralist Diego Rivera being traumatic too (“I suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down,” she once famously said. “The other accident was Diego.”
And maybe that’s the doc’s central issue (beyond some Kahlo intro course 101 storytelling); it’s so concerned with the context—positing Kahlo’s art and her creative values as powerful and relevant as ever, but this idea is never in doubt—that it loses sight of the impressionistic imagination and fervor that made her work so stunning.
So, “Frida” is arguably never as compelling as the artist herself, and at its most passive, the documentary feels a little like enervating dictation. That is not to say “Frida” doesn’t have things going for it. The subject herself is a passionate person teeming with sensation, mood, and fearlessness, and her personal expression is soulful. Kahlo had nerve, boldness, and audacity, and her art and her worldview unwaveringly challenged notions of patriarchy long before such an idea was perhaps a pedestrian catchphrase about empowerment. Kahlo explored the taboo as well: abortions, miscarriages, breastfeeding, and other anathemas that shocked puritanical audiences at the time, and these topics are very powerful and transformative in the doc’s animated sequences.
Kahlo was fierce and unwavering in every philosophical, spiritual, or artistic manner, and clearly, the filmmakers have an adulation for the subject that shines through. Rebellious and defiant, some Kahlo-isms are just unfalteringly matchless, too. If some “Frida” dramas can feel undeviatingly biographical, Kahlo’s contemptuous reflections of New York and 5th Avenue upper-crust Manhattanites in the 1930s are scathingly funny, alive, so attuned to class, inequality, and bourgeoise hollowness. You almost wish more of the narrative was this sharp and unique—she clearly always thumbed her nose at the status quo, but some of the more routine sections read almost too adoringly earnest (you wish the doc spent more time grappling with her artistic contradictions, too, despising these people, but all too aware she needed their wealthy patronage)
Some elements help push the doc past its conventional tendencies, not only the otherworldly animated sequences that capture the essence of her intrepid and fantastical work but also the score by Victor Hernandez Stumpfhauser, which dexterously articulates the impassioned ardor and melancholy that underscored her troubled life.
But there’s certainly a more disparaging take to be had on “Frida.” And that’s akin to, What if someone gave you access to the diaries of a famous artist? And then, what if you, the filmmaker, took them and gave them to someone eloquent to read them, sequentially, from stem to stern, and then you cut together a seemingly endless montage of images overtop of them? Perhaps in the right hands, that’s as inventive as the “Moonage Daydream” doc, which played like an endless screensaver of Bowie footage superimposed over graceful Bowie quotes to some, but to others was something more akin to the hypnagogic fever dream of sound and vision. The result is, unfortunately, more like the former, and at its most unimaginative, “Frida” feels like a collection of images laid over the intimate diary reflections that tire even over a brief 88 minutes.
Yes, it’s occasionally poetic and maybe even luminous, the Spanish-language aspects of the articulacy evocative and reflective (and it doesn’t hurt if you understand Espanol; the romantic language being much more dramatic and profound than English could ever hope to be). But when the rhythms of the doc feel like a little A.I. slideshow-ish, a computer photo carousel on autopilot, the first-time direction begins to show a little bit.
Kahlo was ferocious and independent, a lover, a fighter, and an artist, courageous enough to be raw and unflinchingly messy when needed. While “Frida” does show signs of promise, especially when it leans into the distinctive, and Kahlo’s penchant for magical realism, it’s never as vibrant as her. One wishes the doc could similarly unshackle itself, match the artist’s radiant spirit, and push itself into the next innovative frontier. [C+/B-]
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