In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the AFI Catalog shines a spotlight on FRIDA (2002), starring Salma Hayek and co-written by AFI Conservatory Screenwriting Discipline Head Anna Thomas, which premiered in Toronto 22 years ago this month. FRIDA was based on the true story of renowned Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), as told in the 1983 book by Hayden Herrera, “Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo.” The cinematic adaptation of Kahlo’s tragic life was honored with an AFI AWARD in the year of its release recognizing it as “culturally and artistically representative of the year’s most significant achievements in the art of the moving image.” The film went on to win two Oscars® and was a contender for four more, including a Best Actress nomination for Hayek, who made history as the first Mexican actress to be honored with a selection in this category. Hayek also produced FRIDA with her independent company, Ventanarosa.
Frida Kahlo, as portrayed in FRIDA, grew up in the suburbs of Mexico City and contracted polio at an early age, rendering a deformity in her right leg and foot that later resulted in partial amputation; Kahlo famously attempted to hide her impairment by wearing floor-length skirts.[i] While studying science on a pre-med track in high school, Kahlo was severely wounded when her bus collided with a trolley car in September 1925, resulting in a life of profound physical pain and over 30 subsequent surgeries. Kahlo taught herself to paint during her confinement and used a mirror affixed above her bed to document herself as a subject, creating intimately biographical work that became the hallmark of her career. Several years after her convalescence, Kahlo married one of Mexico’s premier painters, Diego Rivera (1886-1957), who was 20 years her senior and prone to infidelity. According to biographies written about them, both artists had many impassioned affairs, at times with lovers of great notoriety. Traveling through America on a tour of locations where Rivera was painting murals, Kahlo awakened as an artist, but she remained overshadowed by her husband.[ii] One year before Kahlo’s untimely death, which her biographer Hayden Herrera attributes to suicide, Rivera credited his wife as being “the greatest Mexican painter.” He predicted, accurately, that “her work is destined to be multiplied by reproductions and will speak…to the whole world.”[iii]
The inception of FRIDA began in the mid-1980s, when Kahlo was still relatively unknown 30 years after her death.[iv] At that time, producer Nancy Hardin was looking to pivot her career into independent filmmaking and learned about Herrera’s book, which she optioned not long after it was published. Pitching the story as a romantic epic akin to OUT OF AFRICA (1985), Hardin was able to attract some interest from A-list actresses such as that film’s star, Meryl Streep, but no studio would embrace the project since Kahlo’s story remained in relative obscurity in mainstream America, and Latin American culture was not yet believed to be a popular subject for film by studio executives.[v] The Ritchie Valens biopic LA BAMBA (1987), however, was a hit, closely followed by STAND AND DELIVER (1988). By the early 1990s, Kahlo was finally receiving posthumous recognition, setting auction records by selling paintings for millions to collectors including Madonna, who announced her own intention to make a movie about the artist.[vi] Various studios were now lining up Kahlo productions alongside Hardin’s, which was acquired by HBO in 1994. Madonna approached the cable channel about joining forces and secured Marlon Brando to star as Rivera, but other Hollywood moguls were interested in making Kahlo’s movie. Robert De Niro and producer Jan Rosenthal had a project in the works, and LA BAMBA director Luis Valdez was developing a version starring Raul Julia and Jennifer Lopez, to be produced by Francis Ford Coppola.[vii] By 1996, these adaptations did not come to fruition and Trimark purchased Hardin’s project, with Salma Hayek now set to portray the title role. (Hayek had auditioned for the failed Valdez production but was not considered because she was relatively unknown).[viii]
At Trimark, Hayek signed on as a producer and became an ardent advocate for the picture. Although filming was scheduled to begin in the spring of 1998, according to production charts, Trimark balked at Hayek’s budget and dropped out, leaving Hayek to bring FRIDA to Miramax, a studio where she had performed in several pictures. Julie Taymor, who was known for her experimental work in theater and film, was attached as director and she used various innovative techniques to highlight Kahlo’s experience and creative process, including blending live action with stop motion animation and montage, often using imagery from Kahlo’s own paintings such as “My Dress Hangs There,” “The Suicide of Dorothy Hale,” “What the Water Gave Me” and “The Two Fridas.” To keep the $12 million budget manageable, filming took place entirely in Mexico, and many actors worked for scale.[ix] Production lasted from April to June 2001, on location at historical sites as well as on set at Estudios Churubusco Azteca in Mexico City. Instead of incurring the cost of shooting in the U.S., Taymor and her crew of mainly Mexican nationals recreated Kahlo’s adventure abroad using visual effects and animation.[x]
In her introduction to an illustrated screenplay of FRIDA published at the time of the film’s release in 2002, Taymor noted that she was most inspired by the “vision, tenacity and faith” of Salma Hayek and the actress’s “grueling six-year saga of bringing Frida’s story to the screen.”[xi] Fifteen years later, Hayek revealed personal details related to her struggle, publishing an op-ed piece in the New York Times about her harrowing experience working for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax after she denied his multiple sexual advances. Hayek described the upward battle she felt as a young Mexican actress in Hollywood, where it was “unimaginable” for someone from her background to ascend to leading roles, but her determination was galvanized by her passion for Kahlo. Hayek found hope in the artist’s ability to continue painting while disregarding skeptics, and Hayek’s “greatest ambition” was to tell Kahlo’s story in film.[xii] Weinstein, who was known at the time as a champion of independent storytellers, threatened to give the Kahlo project to another actress when Hayek refused his solicitations, and, contested by Hayek’s lawyers on charges of “bad faith,” he resolved to diminish her with an impossible list of demands for the film. Hayek, however, was able to deliver. Weinstein ultimately required Hayek to add a sex scene, and she consented to prevent him from shutting down the production, but the ordeal was deeply traumatic. When the film was completed, Taymor and Hayek had to plead with Weinstein to release the film theatrically, as he was convinced it would fail; FRIDA was an enormous success both critically and financially. Questioning why women “have to go to war to tell our stories,” and “fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity,” Hayek invoked her hero, Frida Kahlo, who persevered by raising her voice about politics, romance and especially her own life through her artwork. Kahlo fought to stay alive by expressing herself. “That’s how she survived,” Taymor told the Los Angeles Times, “She transformed horror and adversity into art. It’s an exorcism.”[xiii]
Kahlo continues to resonate. Just this year, she was the subject of a new documentary that premiered at Sundance, and she has been discussed in a multitude of books, including several fairly recent publications by disabled writers who found the artist to be a muse.[xiv] Still, the movie FRIDA remains the most famous and far-reaching record of Kahlo’s life story. With its glorious exhibition of color, costume and landscape, FRIDA reflects the world Kahlo inhabited and captured in paint, as well as the world today, where women still struggle for equality. In her 2017 article, Salma Hayek noted that she was encouraged by the latest movement of women who were telling their stories after years of silence (with the advent of MeToo and Times Up), and rejoiced that a “new era” of self-expression is upon us, one in which diverse voices are promoted to enrich our culture.[xv]
