Frida – Viva la vida (2019)

Directed by: Giovanni Troilo | 90 minutes | documentary | With: Asia Argento

Most artists appear to have led a turbulent life when a documentary is made about it. That is no different with the Mexican Frida Kahlo. Director Giovanni Troilo (‘Water Lilies of Monet – The Magic of Water and Light’) takes us into her world full of colour, dualism, drama, illness, love and the passion for Mexico.

This land of vibrant music, delicious food and vibrant colors is where Kahlo grew up in the early 1900s. She has a simple childhood, but characterized by a warm home with three sisters and her parents. As a child she contracted polio, which left her with a limp. But that doesn’t close her medical file. When disaster strikes one day in 1925 and she and her first boyfriend Arias have a serious accident on public transport, she is confined to bed for a long time. She has a perforated stomach and uterus from the handrail of the bus that punctured her, her leg is badly crushed and her spine and vertebrae are broken in three places.

During her ongoing and arduous recovery, Frida finds herself beginning to split into two people: Frida the victim and Frida the free young woman. The latter translates into the first of a series of fascinating colorful self-portraits. Characteristic is her honest view of her appearance. There are no missing eyebrows and remarkable hair on her upper lip. She paints herself in all her work with the notion: “I paint myself because I know them best.”

Her father (a photographer) sees the creativity unfolding and hangs a mirror above her bed so she can paint herself while lying down. After months of rehabilitation, she is making a reasonable recovery and is cautiously enjoying life in Cachuchas again, even though the puppy love with Arias is on the rocks, which makes her deeply sad.

Three years later she is introduced to Diego Rivera, also an artist, and they marry a year later despite the age difference of twenty years. She and Diego are soul mates and for a long time life seems to be smiling at her. For Rivera’s revolutionary work, they leave Mexico to settle in Detroit, a place Frida has always hated. The American city does not radiate charity and humanity as in its own Mexican village. Frida is deeply unhappy, but her pregnancy makes a big difference. She’s over the moon, but it shouldn’t be. The first miscarriage leaves Frida empty again. Unfortunately, more will follow. Her bus accident has made having children a long-lost dream, and when Diego cheats on Frida’s younger sister, Cristina, it’s enough for the artist. An understanding choice until, years later, she surprises friend and foe by remarrying Diego.

All these events find a home on her canvases. For example, in 1932 she painted the famous “Henry Ford Hospital”, where she lost her unborn child. As a viewer, we are told this background information by Asia Argento, an Italian actress, writer and singer. We also know her as a friend of the late chef Anthony Bourdain and she was one of the figureheads of the #MeToo movement. A salient detail is that as a 37-year-old she herself had a cross-border incident with a 17-year-old boy.

Asia tells in dramatically highlighted intermezzos about Frida’s thoughts and experiences, assisted by dreamy non-verbal interludes of a young Frida. You may honestly wonder what these artistic images contribute to the documentary ‘Frida. Viva la Vida’. Very schoolly people are told what you see in the paintings, but why she painted in this way and also what technique she used is not discussed. Frida was an expert in storytelling, because her work shows real and often multiple life stories on a canvas. On the other hand, Argento’s distant voice-over, which explains plastically and unnecessarily what you have to see on the canvas, adds little. That is why this documentary also lags a little behind Troilo’s predecessor about Claude Monet, where as a viewer you were taken much more into the shadow of the French impressionist, almost like an apprentice painter.

You have to approach art with your own interpretation and if it is chewed up, it is no longer your own experience. In this work, too little attention is paid to the zeitgeist of the 1930s and 1940s in Mexico and the art movement that emerged from them. Fortunately, the interviews of the enthusiastic museum staff and local art experts add warmth and authenticity to ‘Frida. Viva la Vida’. That is a pleasant cross-pollination with the warm use of color in the painting of this special, lively and persistent woman, however tragic her existence may have been from time to time. She was 47 years old, but you simply cannot escape the love of life.