 |
This is the project with the potential to transform her image from that of a light-weight, hot-blooded, Latino temptress to that of a significant Oscar-calibre actress in Hollywood.
Set to open in Toronto theatres on Friday after its triumphant debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, Frida is the story of the brilliant if tempestuous life and times of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo and her love affair with bombastic Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.
Both were controversial. Both were communists. He was unfaithful to her. She was openly bisexual in a society which repressed lesbianism. He was big and fat. She was small and hairy. Both flaunted their uncanny and illogical charisma and sexuality. Their artistic legacy is astonishing.
Under the guidance of director Julie Taymor (the visual stylist who created The Lion King on Broadway), the film was shot on location in Mexico, primarily in English. The story ranges from the early 1920s to the mid-1950s. Hayek plays Frida. Alfred Molina plays Rivera. Both are touted as Oscar contenders with the film as a best picture candidate.
Hayek was in Toronto for the film fest. Flush with excitement, she talked with The Sun's Jane Stevenson. Now, several weeks later and trying to see the big picture for her courageous but risky art film, The Sun is there as Hayek sits down with a new group of journalists.
Q: The film is winning acclaim. You must be very proud of it. Are you allowing yourself that?
A: I am! I am not shy to say it!
Q: What is it like to finally see your dream come to fruition like this after so long?
A: (It is) now eight years. You know, it felt like I was a racehorse and they had kept me between the gates for a long time and had forgotten about me. And I was ready to run for years and they just kept me there! Then, all of a sudden, they just opened the gate and it felt very liberating and wonderful.
Q: How committed were you to the film early on?
A: I purchased the rights with my own money because I still didn't have a green light from anybody. I don't make a lot of money. For me, it was a LOT of money I would invest in this.
Q: As a woman, especially as a Mexican-born actress, how did you relate to Frida Kahlo?
A: Well, you know, we both share our love for Mexico. There are many things about Frida that I love, but what inspires me the most is her courage to be unique. She was always who she was. She had monsters around her that should have influenced her a lot more and didn't. She was always on an internal journey. She spent a lot of quiet time with herself trying to discover who she was and she listened to who she was. And she was by no means conventional and it was not easy, even before marrying Diego. She started exploring with women. I don't want to say she was only with women but she had very meaningful relationships with women. At a very young age, she got caught. It was very scandalous. She got into a lot of trouble. It was around the time she had the accident (Kahlo was impaled through the pelvis by a large metal rod in a horrendous streetcar accident which nearly killed her). She was not apologetic for who she was and everything she did, she did in a unique way. She would take the controversy and tragedy and make the best out of it.
Q: Is that something you try to do?
A: I'd like to be like that one day. It's something I'd like to be. But she would take pain and turn it into art -- or poetry. She would take her husband's infidelity and turn it into freedom for herself.
Q: Was there a point of despair on the project?
A: This movie fell apart like 10 times. Was there ever a point when I thought my film was not going to get made? So many! The secret is not to think about (it). The only way you get a movie like this done is not to think about that. You just focus on trying to get the movie right -- because I could have done the film twice before.
Q: What was not right about those opportunities?
A: This movie got off the ground twice and I didn't want to do it. We put it away because it was not about making the movie, it was about making the right movie. And that takes years. So I treasure this time. I learned a lot from it. I think it needed that time to get to the place it is today.
Q: Did you need the time to mature, too?
A: No! This is what is ironic. I could have played this character five years ago. Just nobody else would give me the opportunity. This is why it may seem to you that I am a different person now or that I have a different kind of talent now. But I had it then. It's just that Hollywood would never dream (of trusting her with a major art film such as Frida). I don't know why but that is just the way it is. However, I wouldn't have played this part. I would've played some cliche of Frida. This part didn't exist until Julie Taymor, Edward Norton (her actor-filmmaker boyfriend, who acted in a small role and rewrote major passages of the Frida script), and everybody became involved.
Q: How did Norton become involved, especially when Rodrigo Garcia had to leave the project to shoot his own film and it became necessary to find new screenwriters to polish the final version of the long-evolving script?
A: It was his idea. He had been living with me, you know, bitching about this thing for a while.
Q: What was the problem with outside writers?
A: You have to read 100 scripts. Then you narrow it down to 10. You meet the 10 writers and you really have no clue who is the best one. You say, "Okay, this one." Then you spend weeks with them explaining what you want. Then they go away to write it and they are never on time. They always need an extra month. Then they come and it's terrible. I'm sorry, but I am being honest. "Okay, it's not terrible but it's not what you told them to do because, of course, everyone wants to show you their own take. Now the rewrites (are necessary) and they're pissed off because you didn't like it. So Edward offered himself up.
Q: What was it like with co-star Alfred Molina?
A: I tell him he's a movie stealer. I think he took the movie away. I think he stole the picture from me and I tell him that I am proud of him for it. I tease him in so many ways but it was very important to me to find somebody like that because (this is) one of the tricks to tell this story. It is a story about Frida but she always has to be under his shadow because that's the way it was in real life. The movie is a love story. It's not a story about falling in love. It's a movie about staying in love and I think that sets it apart from most of the love stories that we see in America.
Q: Don't Frida's and Diego's personalities and physiques also set it apart from Hollywood romances?
A (laughing): Apart from the fact that it's about a fat man and a hairy woman? That's a minor point. And they're Mexican communists? And that they cheated on each other the whole time that they were in love? I do think that they're different.
Q: How did you find the courage to use your body so openly in the film, as a canvas for Frida's art, as a sexual entity and as an instrument of Kahlo's lifetime struggle?
A: First of all, I completely trusted Julie Taymor. I think she did an extraordinary job. We got along fantastically and I trust her with my eyes folded (we think she means "closed"). But I do think it's easier to do nudity or have scenes with another woman.
With more risky things, when you truly believe they are organic to the story that you are making, and that they are an important part of portraying this character and doing it justice, (then) it is easier to do that than it is to wear clothes that are sexy but are worn in an exploitative way.
On Wild Wild West, I was never comfortable one day (wearing a low-cut outfit). I was ashamed to come out of the trailer every time, every time. Sometimes, it is easier to be naked with honesty.
Q: Were you ever fearful of doing Frida justice?
A: No -- but I want to explain something. When you truly love somebody, it's just very easy to feel their pain. It's very easy to feel their sorrow and their joy. Everything moves you. Everything that happens to them moves you.