Frida MPAA Rating: R Entertainment: +2 Content: -4

Salma Hayek stars as controversial Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in this biographical drama. When a bus accident confines young Frida to a body cast for months, she pours her energy into sketching and painting. Despite the doctors? predictions, Frida?s strong will overcomes her injuries and she walks again. However, the pain remains with her the rest of her life. To help pay the medical expenses, Frida takes some of her paintings to famed muralist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) to see if they are good enough to sell. Rivera recognizes her talent, but he?s also drawn to Frida. Soon he?s not only introduced her to his Communist and Socialist friends, he?s asked her to marry him. Their stormy marriage, highlighted by affairs by both, lasts twenty-five years until her death, although they lived in separate houses joined by a rooftop bridge. When Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush) flees Stalinist Russia, he and his wife stay with Rivera and Frida. But an affair with the free-spirited artist forces a move to another house where Trotsky is killed.

This passionate presentation of Kahlo?s life gives insight to the surrealistic images in her works. Art lovers will undoubtedly embrace Hayek?s performance. Unfortunately, Frida?s amoral sexual life is also graphically presented. Numerous scenes of various sexual encounters with both genders include explicit nudity. Already noted as a womanizer, Diego even has an affair with Frida?s sister. One scene also features a bloody miscarriage, with Frida later painting the aborted fetus as it sits in a jar on the table. Graphic sexual content, explicit nudity and some strong profanity and obscenities make FRIDA artistically intriguing but morally colorless.

Preview Reviewer: Paul Bicking
Distributor: Miramax Films, 375 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10013