Frida

Director Julie Taymor and four writers (Clancy Sigal, Diane Lake, Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas) film the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) and her tempestuous marriage to Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). With so many writers and years of development and false starts, the film understandably is a bit disjointed, but it blazes with life and glistens with Taymor’s daring theatrical and surrealistic touches. Hayek is amazing; she fully inhabits the title role in a way that makes her work in things such as Fools Rush In and Dogma look puny by comparison. She and Molina (who plays Rivera as a roaring force of life, like Zorba the Greek crossed with a dancing bear) give the film its passion and humanity, while Taymor (like an enthusiastic curator) connects the threads of Kahlo’s life and art.