In Detail

Director Giovanni Troilo swerves his documentary away from traditional nuts and bolts biography in favour of what he sees as Kahlo’s state of mind as portrayed in a series of key paintings. This makes a refreshing change from the timeline and talking heads approach of your standard visual arts documentary.

Italian actor Asia Argento is our guide throughout the film reading letters, diaries and private confessions. The film succeeds in drawing together key themes in Kahlo’s work: the drama of her physical pain (a spinal injury), her sense of theatre and her ability to transmute gruesome anatomical detail into symbolic architecture.

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