CAROLINA A. MIRANDA
THERE ARE STILL PARTS LEFT TO DIVULGE, AS SEEN IN A NEW PRIME VIDEO DOCUMENTARY
IS I T P O S S I B L E to know any more about Frida Kahlo than we already do? The 20th century Mexican painter placed her tumultuous life and her bodily pains on her canvases. Her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, incorporated her visage into some of his most famous murals. She was photographed relentlessly, even appearing in Vogue. And that was just in her lifetime. (Kahlo died in 1954 at the age of 47.) ¶ Since then, she has been depicted in feature films by Mexican actors Ofelia Medina and Salma Hayek (in 1983 and 2002, respectively), as well as in documentaries — most recently in director Louise Lockwood’s three-part series “Becoming Frida Kahlo.”
She is also the subject of countless murals and other art. In Mexico City in 2016, I saw a fascinating installation by artist Juan Acha at the Museo de Arte Moderno that examined the ways in which Kahlo’s 1939 canvas “Las Dos Fridas” has been copied by fellow artists and appropriated by popular culture.
Kahlo’s work and her image also have generated endless mountains of merch (also addressed in Acha’s installation). Currently sitting on my desk is a stack of Frida Kahlobranded cosmetics I acquired at Walgreens several years ago — objects in search of an essay.
All of this means that Peruvianborn director Carla Gutiérrez’s new documentary, “Frida,” which landed earlier this month on Prime Video, is entering a crowded field. Clocking in at almost 90 minutes, the doc provides a cursory overview of this well-chronicled artist. Certainly, the story of Kahlo could fill a set of encyclopedias: She came of age in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, was inspired by its mission to rethink the essence of Mexican culture, counted Isamu Noguchi and Leon Trotsky among her lovers and produced groundbreaking paintings, inspired by folk traditions, that depict the devastations of womanhood. (Hayden