Hola Frida

Movie Review

The late Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is a cultural superstar now—her self-portraits gracing everything from posters to T-shirts to refrigerator magnets. But before Kahlo became an artist, activist and icon, she was simply a little girl, growing up in early 20^th Century Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City.

In Hola Frida, we meet that little girl—surrounded by Mexico’s vibrancy and color, and a culture that she colors in turn. She runs pell-mell through the village with little sister Christina and her tortilla-crazy dog, Chiquita, soaking in the country’s eclectic influences without much thought.

All that running stops with a screech at age 6. Little Frida contracts polio, a potentially deadly and highly contagious disease. Frida is swiftly quarantined—unable to go to school or even hang out with her sister. Just like that, the sprawling vida of Mexico whittles down to one gray room. And the life inside that room, Frida, begins to grow weak and gray, too. It seems as though the girl’s only company may ultimately be La Muerte. Death.

But then, a new world opens up—a strange, feverish world filled with jungle and animals and ancient ruins. There, in this land, she meets someone who looks just like her. And when La Muerte tries to crash this surreal party to take Frida away, Frida’s new friend isn’t having it.

“I can’t let you do this to her!” she says. “I’ll do anything, but please, spare her! She’s so young!”

Well, Frida is young, La Muerte admits. And the world is filled with other souls to collect.

“Very well,” La Muerte says. “I won’t take her away today. But you know it’s inevitable.”

And so, Frida’s given more time. Polio robbed one leg of its strength, but it didn’t take her life.

But what is young Frida to do with that life? Part of it we know. But the rest? Or at least some of the rest? This movie tells us.

Positive Elements

Frida Kahlo has produced some memorable works of art. But who helped produce her? According to Hola Frida, it would be Mom and Dad, that’s who.

Frida’s father, Guillermo, is a massive influence in the girl’s life (both historically and, here, cinematically). After Frida begins to recover from polio, Guillermo, a photographer, puts her to work coloring his photos and encourages her to be creative. “To find the right colors, you need to look within,” he tells her.

When she expresses an interest in entering a roller-skating contest despite her weakened left leg, her mother, Matilde objects. But Guillermo says it’ll be good for her, and he creates an exercise program for Frida to help her get stronger. And when Frida announces that she wants to be a doctor (in an age when women were discouraged from such professions), Guillermo encourages his daughter’s unusual ambition, too. (But he cautions, “You’re going to have to work hard. Very, very hard.” And that’s good advice.)

Guillermo serves as a bit of a cushion between Frida and Matilde, her prickly and opinionated mother. Historically, the two reportedly had a strained relationship, and we see some of that tension in Hola Frida. But the film also paints Matilde sympathetically. Guillermo tells Frida that her mother “loves you with all her heart. She’s just trying to protect you—in her own way.”

We see Matilde’s fierce protection. When an old villager scoffs at Frida’s medical ambitions—saying he’d never go to a female doctor—Matilde comes to her daughter’s defense, stressing how smart and capable Frida is. “The world is changing, thankfully, whether you like it or not,” Matilde tells the man.

Frida tells her mother, “I’m gonna make you proud, Mom.” Matilde walks out of the bedroom, closes the door and whispers, “We’re already incredibly proud of you, Frida,” a telling reflection upon the sad, unnecessary barriers between the two.

Frida also receives help and encouragement from her sister, Christina, and from several of her classmates. But her surreal friend proves to be a literal life saver. Not only does she shoo La Muerte away when Frida’s 6 years old, but she’s a font of solid advice throughout, encouraging Frida to shake off her fears and ignore would-be bullies. “Some people are just so sad that they can’t support the joy they see in others,” Frida’s “friend” tells her. And when La Muerte comes for Frida again, the friend—whom Frida eventually calls “Sick Frida”—shows a willingness to sacrifice herself, however ephemeral that “self” may be.

Spiritual Elements

Hola Frida is a movie about kids and made for kids. But when it comes to dissecting its faith elements, you just might need a doctorate in comparative religion. I’ll do my best, but forgive me if I stumble here or there. The spiritual underpinnings of Hola Frida are wildly murky.

Mexico was, and is, a predominantly Catholic country: We see plenty of evidence of that in Hola Frida. Cross-topped churches adorn the skyline of Coyoacán, and Matilde hopes that the “Virgin of Guadalupe” will protect her daughter. An adult Frida tells us that her family “waited and prayed at the foot of my bed” after she suffers a terrible accident.

But early on, Frida meets a family of newcomers who are descended from the Zapotecs—“one of the most ancient civilizations of our country,” Matilde explains to Frida. The Zapotec rain/storm god Cocijo is depicted in a wall hanging behind one of the newcomers. And while Christina is scared of the image, Frida is fascinated. A Zapotec woman unpacks a myth featuring Cocijo—one that tries to explain why we see pictures in the clouds. (Unmentioned in the movie: Zapotecs often sacrificed people—especially children—to the god.)

But the dividing line between Christian and pagan beliefs isn’t always so clear-cut. The country’s traditions often blend Christianity and ancient pre-Christian elements, which can be further complicated the country’s politics. Many Mexicans in Kahlo’s day embraced pre-Columbian traditions as a form of national pride and a rebuke to (what they would call) European and American bullying.

For instance, La Muerte—adorned with a fancy wide-brimmed hat—may have roots in ancient Aztec beliefs, specifically the Aztec goddess of death (Mictēcacihuātl). But she also echoes a Mexican artistic tradition of the Catrina, a well-dressed skeletal figure what was originally intended to mock Mexicans who followed European fashions. (Diego Rivera, a muralist who eventually married Frida Kahlo in real life and who’s briefly given a nod in the movie, was one such artist who popularized the motif.)

Hola Frida also devotes a scene to the Day of the Dead: Frida and her family bake food for their dearly departed loved ones, build altars for their ancestors and sprinkle marigold petals on their graves. (The scent of the petals is said to draw the dead to their offerings.). While academics argue about whether the holiday is truly rooted in pre-Columbian traditions (with some saying it has a lot more in common with Medieval European allegories of life and death), many celebrants themselves proudly embrace its alleged pre-Christian roots. La Muerte also mentions the “Flower Bridge” to the afterlife.

Matilde gives Frida what she describes as a sacred Zapotec talisman, a ribbon, that drains away fear and doubt and replaces it with courage. We see some pictures drawn or painted by Frida that feature a yin-yang symbol.

Sexual & Romantic Content

The real Frida Kahlo is considered a hero of the LGBT community. Kahlo had affairs with both men and women, and she explores her own sexuality and sexual identity so openly in her art.

But in Hola Frida—which, of course, largely focuses on a prepubescent Frida—the only evidence we see of pushing gender norms is when the girl dons what looks to be a business suit before a big town banquet. The movie suggests she does so not to make a statement, but to hide her polio-shrunken leg. Her mother throws a fit: “It’s just not the way, Frida!” she says. “A girl just can’t walk around dressed like a boy!”

Speaking of boys, a 6-year-old boy named Tonito has a crush on 6-year-old Frida; he often blushes in her presence, and she kisses him on the cheek once.

Violent Content

Frida experiences two painful episodes in Hola Frida. The first comes when she contracts polio. When she suffers pain from the disease, an otherwise colorful scene cuts to black, where the part of the body that hurts (be it leg or Frida’s heart) is outlined in white. In her surreal, alternate world, we sometimes see a giant, stylized heart (a motif from Kahlo’s real-world art) beating weakly.

The second experience happens when Frida is 18 years old and studying to become a doctor. She and an adult Tonito hop on a rickety bus—soon to be struck by a city streetcar. Historically, we know that the accident killed several people, and Kahlo was impaled by an iron handrail. The movie skips those details and depicts Frida falling in darkness, accompanied by shards of glass. She and her alter-ego “Sick Frida” spend time in that surrealistic alternate landscape and confront La Muerte once again. Frida later awakes, and we see her in traction.

Someone knocks Frida over while both are roller-skating. Frida’s father has an epileptic seizure. We see Frida much later in her life, wheelchair-bound and missing a leg. (The historical Frida Kahlo had her leg amputated in 1953, less than a year before her death.)

In her alternate world, Frida sinks in quicksand—a metaphor for her fear and doubt, we’re told.

Crude or Profane Language

None.

Drug & Alcohol Content

None.

Other Noteworthy Elements

When Frida returns to school after she recovers from polio, several classmates mock her shrunken left leg and call her “chicken leg.” (We later learn the bully ringleader, Raphael, is dealing with his own misery at home, and he and Frida eventually become friends.)

Several years later, Frida attends college with longtime classmates Raphael and Tonito. The two of them (along with another friend) brag about putting soap on a staircase, and they hope that a visiting artist will slip and fall.

Frida grew up during the chaotic and complex Mexican Revolution. We hear very little about the revolution, but a couple of women (dressed in European fashion) sniff that those fighting against the government are just a bunch of rabble-rousers trying to make trouble. Matilde snaps that those fighters are simply trying to “fight for their rights and to reclaim the land that they worked so hard for all their lives.” (Land redistribution was a huge focus of the revolution.)

While the film doesn’t get into Frida’s later affiliations, the historical Frida Kahlo joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1927 and was active in politics most of her life. She and her husband invited Leon Trotsky—former Soviet leader turned Russian exile—and his wife to live with them in the late 1930s, and Trotsky and Kahlo allegedly embarked on a brief affair.

Conclusion

When we review movies at Plugged In, we usually try to stick with what the movie itself gives us. For instance, if we see a movie about George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and ‘fessing up afterward, we concentrate on what that scene tells us about the character Washington, the guy we see in the film. Sure, we may mention that the real George Washington probably never cut down that tree, but we leave it at that and go on about our review. We’re movie reviewers, not historians or psychologists.

But with a movie like Hola Frida, we must go a little deeper.

On its own, Hola Frida is a beautifully animated and rather sweet story about a little girl dealing with some big problems. She deals with bullies. She struggles with her self-worth. She dreams of becoming someone important in a culture that would rather she just stay home. But thanks to her own indominable spirit—and with the love and help of her parents—she overcomes obstacles and triumphs. She may have a “chicken leg,” but her spirit soars like an eagle.

That makes Hola Frida—on the surface—a very nice film. It seems to pay close attention to Kahlo’s actual biography, too, and it lovingly folds in elements and themes that crop up in her art. And while parents do have to navigate some murky spiritual elements, Hola Frida is otherwise pretty clean.

But kids who embrace Hola Frida may very well want to know more about the real Frida Kahlo—the artist whom Vanity Fair called in 2013 a “politically correct heroine for every wounded minority.” Her popularity in recent years has soared, and she’s been embraced by the LGBT community as one of its own. She’s become so big in recent years that she’s posthumously spawned a cultural phenomenon: Fridamania.

“She clicks with today’s sensibilities—her psycho-obsessive concern with herself, her creation of a personal alternative world carry a voltage,” Kirk Varnendoe, chief curator for San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, tells Vanity Fair. “Her constant remaking of her identity, her construction of a theater of the self are exactly what preoccupy such contemporary artists as Cindy Sherman or Kiki Smith and, on a more popular level, Madonna. … She fits well with the odd, androgynous hormonal chemistry of our particular epoch.”

Kahlo is certainly a formidable artist. But she’s treated a bit like an irreligious saint these days—an irony perhaps Kahlo herself would chuckle over. In today’s pop culture, the proudly Communist, gender-fluid Kahlo stands immaculate, her bold self-expression washing away any would-be secular sin.

Hola Frida—with its fawning praise of the future artist—does nothing to diminish that hagiographic impression. It encourages its young viewers to explore and ultimately embrace the cult of Kahlo without hesitation. And for some parents, that’ll be a problem.