barrydayton

I am a fan of biopics, especially of creative people, such as artists, writers and musicians. In my opinion a fatal flaw of some biopics is the actual inclusion of the subject talking about herself. Seeing that the cast consists of only Frida herself and the fact that I am not a fan of recent films I was fully prepared to give this a rating of 5, but Frida Kahlo is an interesting person and so I felt I had to watch it even if I hated it. But the fact that Frida has been dead for about 70 years and had nothing to do with the production of the film allowed this to be not just good but a fantastic film. A large amount of the material comes from her diaries and paintings, many of them self portraits, and in these Frida was very honest about herself. One feature is that many of her paintings are partially animated. Again, this could have been bad but it was tastefully done so enhanced, rather than spoiled, the film. Fortunately these animations were done before the current AI which would just make her art works into cartoons.

This international film addresses the question often asked in film "is it possible to have a platonic friendship between an unmarried and woman? ". In this case the man is a handsome rich playboy, Erast (Gabriel Olds), and the woman, Liza, (Barbora Bobulova), is the beautiful but naive daughter of a hard working peasant farmer recently deceased. Liza's mother is sickly but refuses to die until she has assured Liza's future by marriage. Unfortunately Liza has been discovered by Erast who cannot marry Liza because of class differences, but he supports the mother and daughter by buying their farm produce. As a playboy he is not wanting for sexual release so is very careful that while he spends his free time with Liza their relationship is not sexual. Until it is. Then the relationship and his life go downhill, he loses his money gambling and must marry the rich countess who has been courting him. Needless to say, there is not a happy ending.

Ben Gazzara is the main character as narrator and does a nice job. This is a small film but I found the production quality to be good even though it seemed filmed mostly in a studio with green screen. This film is worth the 95 minutes running time.