Not strictly a documentary, this film combines the interviews with photos, historical footage, paintings, poetry, Mexican folk songs and excerpts of a play. The play, The Diary of Frida Kahlo, is an English adaptation of Abraham Oceransky’s Spanish language play Las Dos Fridas. As the name implies, Cardona and Provost play different sides of Frida Kahlo, many of whose paintings were self-portraits. Not only do they play the woman on both sides of the canvas, but also Frida young and old, her interior self and her public exterior, the private woman and the public figure. It is an imaginative approach which presents thoughts and emotions on the screen and one can only imagine how powerful the play itself could have been. However, the hybrid film is not always successful, it is sometimes disconcerting to shift mental gears between the symbolic imagery of the play and the direct gaze of interview subjects. At other times, of course, this juxtaposition is quite effective as when the Frida of the play tries to come to grips with the realization that she cannot have children and a close friend describes a fearful night when Frida had a miscarriage and then we see Kahlo’s horrific vision of the loss of a baby. Kahlo’s paintings, of course, are the centerpiece of this work and they are the most eloquent witnesses to one woman’s history.
This article appears in January 31 • 1992 (Cover).