By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * *)
Madonna was first cab off the rank in the race to bring the story of Mexico's acclaimed artist to the screen but it was always going to be a catfight between the host nation's two favourite daughters, and fortunately Jennifer Lopez lost.
Salma Hayek
and director Julie Taymor, famous for her production of The Lion King on Broadway and her movie of Shakespeare's Titus (1999), paint a garish life story in bold colours. Hayek was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Kahlo is one of the most iconic and controversial artists of the past century. Her life was very much her art, changed by two things, a horrific bus accident as a teenager which left her in constant pain, and her involvement and marriage to the muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina).
She spent a great deal of her life in a cast or in bed and expressed her suffering through her art. Marriage was another expression, of unconventional politics and sexual behaviour. Both were ardent socialists (Rivera would controversially feature Lenin in a mural for the Rockefeller Centre in New York, which Rockefeller ordered to be hammered down), and both enjoyed liaisons: Frida's lovers included the famous jazz singer-dancer Josephine Baker and Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush), hiding out in the Kahlo-Rivera menage before his assassination in Mexico City.
For once, a director treats Hayek as an actor rather than set decoration and, given her natural and national empathy with the role she responds with far and away the best performance of her career.
DVD: not available for review.
