Documentary Review: Frida Kahlo The documentary film Frida Kahlo provides an overview of eponymous Mexican artists life

and artworks. Fridas paintings are so closely intertwined with her lifeshe paints her reality, which means that her works serve an autobiographical purpose as well. From the film, we can see how several main events have influenced her: a bus accident when she was a teenager, and her marriage, divorce, and subsequent remarriage to Diego Rivera. Also covered briefly in the film are her miscarriages, her affair with Trotsky, and surgeries for her ailing body. What I like about the film is that it is simple, with no interviews with experts or any added drama. Instead, it allows Fridas paintings, photographs, and excerpts from her diary to speak for her, giving us a more intimate, personal look into her life and thoughts, emphasised by the use of Frida rather than her family name. Particularly enjoyable is the Mexican flavour to the film, with the use of traditional Mexican music, scenes of daily life, and festivals like the Day of the Dead. As Frida was greatly influenced by her Mexican heritage, this is helpful in understanding where she comes from. With only a passing familiarity with Frida Kahlo, I usually only recall the heavy brow and stiffness of her self-portraits. The film helped me see the force of her character shining through her diary and paintings. I realise now that her physical body was a prison restraining her, and that she is truly beautiful woman full of emotion and soul, which surprised me. Fridas Mexican roots and identity are integral to her art, with the use of bright colours, retablo-style paintings, and Mexican motifs like animals (hummingbirds and monkeys), Tehuana costumes, and primitive imagery. Primitive art might have been trendy in Europe and America, but to her, it was part of her life, as evident from her painting My Wet Nurse and I (1937). Furthermore, as Mexicans celebrated death, she approached it differently

from the other European artists, not something fearful or taboo but a part of the cycle of life. The Two Fridas (1939) makes it obvious that her Mexican side is indeed her heart. Closely associated to this Mexican side of her is her painter husband Diego Rivera, who collected pre-Colombian folk art. He definitely made a significant impact on her career as an artist. Because Frida loved him deeply, her paintings reflected the highs and lows of their relationship, the emotional turmoil she goes through when he has affairsfor example, in Diego and I (1949) where tears show her heartache but his image on her forehead shows that she is still thinking of him. The imagination and heavy use of symbolism in her paintings may have lead Andre Breton to label her as a surrealist, but I disagree. Frida did not consider psychoanalytic theories when she painted or try to draw up her subconscious by free association. Neither did she paint her dreams. Instead, she painted what was real to her and grounded firmly in daily life. She deliberately chose the elements in her painting to honestly show who she is and the emotions she felt. Fantasy images are as real to her as reality. A more accurate category for Frida might be Expressionist, as her paintings are highly evocative and we can feel her pain and anguish at traumatic events in her life. However, as Frida said, I paint my own reality, perhaps not being categorised at all would please her best.