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While papa was busy working late a few nights ago, I decided to take the opportunity to catch up on my movies. I have a few DVDs unopened but after checking what was on the telly, I knew what I was going to watch. Frida came out in 2002 yet for some reason, that is totally beyond me, I have never seen it. I think it may had had something to do with Salma Hayek’s acting abilities and lack thereof, I say feeling guilty because I was pleasantly surprised that night.
Being Mexican, I’m guessing, helped her transform herself into Frida and understand her but the feel of the movie and that woman’s passion struck me. Almost paralyzed, constantly ‘betrayed’ by her husband, in severe pain all her life, she fought back with a positive mind and a strong belief in love. I watched, jaw dropping, while she screamed and cried at her husband, Diego Riviera, the first time he cheated on her and then when he finally bedded her sister. She was already painting her intensities, admired and praised by so many, yet she never took any of it for granted declaring that she hated compliments.
Two points and aspects of Frida’s life really got me thinking. The first is those eyebrows. How much confidence does a woman require to give the middle finger to conventional beauty? A lot! Something so small, so insignificant spoke volumes about her as a person and a woman. She was beautiful, as far as I’m concerned…and I could never part with my tweezers.
The second thing I couldn’t get out of my head is how much of a contradiction she was. I’m always telling myself ‘you have to be this way, or that way. A bitch or a goody two shoes. You can’t be both’. Well, Frida made me realize that you can be both. A strong woman, one of the strongest I have noted, yet she was being brought to her knees by her husband’s inability to keep other women out of his bed. Sarcastic, real, naughty and unconventional she was, a truly admirable person. She never got to be a mother. The accident that almost left her paralyzed, ruined any chance of her having a baby. In the beginning, you don’t even think this is an issue to her. She seems too cynical to be a mother. However, when she becomes pregnant only to lose the baby, a boy, she reacts like any woman would. It’s painful to watch, especially if you have experienced such a loss but it also made me wonder: How would that baby have changed the legend that is Frida Kahlo?
“There was this skinny kid with these eyebrows shouting up at me: Diego! I want to show you my paintings! But of course, she made me come down to her. And I did. And i’ve never stopped looking. I admire her. Her work is acid and tender. Hard as steel and fine as a butterfly’s wing. Lovable as a smile. Cruel as the bitterness of life. I don’t believe that ever before has a woman put such agonized poetry on canvas…” Diego Riviera, quote from the movie Frida.
I am hoping I can make I Am Woman a regular thing here on georgie’s mummy. It will be a compilation of women I admire and derive strength from.
