A while back, Frida Kahlo's work was exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, alongside that of Georgia O'Keefe and Emily Carr. I think it was a travelling show, and the hook was the three very different approaches to art. It was an odd mix, to say the least.
I had a typical reaction to most of her work, in that I found it disturbing at a very low, personal, level. On the whole, I would describe it as exploring chronic, on-going violence done to one's own inner physical being, and the difficulty of living through that and with that year after year, all in the most mundane and matter of fact way, and at the same time shot all through with layers of iconographic symbolism. It was hard to look at, one and then the next and the next after that, all filled with pain and loss and being tired of pain and of hurting and here and there beauty anyway.
(And on the next wall would be the spare clarity of O'Keefe, or Carr's chilly, lush forests. Jarring.)
So I was rather looking forward to this movie, hoping for a bit of perspective, a bit of context. I am a happy camper, since that's exactly what I got from it. Well, as much as one can in a two hour frame, but more than I had before. It's a lovely bit of work. There's the more usual realistic staging but also scenes of frankly digitized images and objects, very often involving Kahlo's paintings or elements from them, which embody in their two to ten seconds' worth of existence a complicated sequence of events that in life were the meat of months and years.
If you have a chance to see it, do so.
