neumu [ cinematronic ]




	Frida
	Julie Taymor Salma Hayek, Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas, Edward Norton, Valeria Golino, Saffron Burrows, Mia Maestro, Roger Rees 2002		Salma Hayek gives her finest performance as the groundbreaking Mexican artist and political activist Frida Kahlo in the scintillating biopic "Frida." Kahlo's life was a sensational thing, including a crippling accident in her youth, a stormy marriage to lionized painter Diego Rivera, eventual acclaim as a surrealist and an affair with exiled Russian leader Leon Trotsky. After winning a Tony for the stage musical "The Lion King" and reinventing Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" for the screen, director Julie Taymor brings her colorful visual style to "Frida," which is all the better for her creative imagery. But Hayek and the monumental Alfred Molina as Rivera — the love of Frida's life and a man with an insatiable appetite for food and women — give this film its heart and weight. That's not meant to slight top actors Geoffrey Rush, Ashley Judd, Antonio Banderas and Edward Norton, pitch-perfect in supporting roles. Judd, in particular, outdoes most of her recent Hollywood work, playing the seductive photographer and radical Tina Modotti, who, it's implied, had a tequila-fueled fling with Frida.