Features: DVD
Editor's Note
EVITA: Madonna tackles the title role in Alan Parker's ambitious recounting of the brief, amazing life of former Argentine first lady Eva Perón. Presented almost entirely in song and narrated by Antonio Banderas as a fictional everyman, the film charts the alternately revered and reviled Evita's rise from poverty to become a film and radio actress; her relationship with President Juan Perón (Jonathan Pryce); and her tragic death from cancer at age 33. The music, including the Oscar-winning song "You Must Love Me," weaves an entrancing web, and the sets and costumes are awe inspiring. Like PINK FLOYD: THE WALL, EVITA is an enchanting mixture of epic fairy tale and sociopolitical psychodrama.FRIDA: Brilliant colors that bring Frida Kahlo's Mexico City to vibrant life combine with a captivating performance by Salma Hayek to make director Julie Taymor's FRIDA a fascinating film. Starting and ending with Frida on her deathbed, the film spans the famous painter's life from her teenage years to her death at the young age of 47. From start to finish, Frida is portrayed as a relentlessly energized, self-righteous, headstrong, assertive woman. At the age of 18, Frida was horribly injured in a bus accident. Though she learned to walk again, she lived her life in physical agony, enduring multiple surgeries, and eventually needing a wheelchair. Yet her condition did not stop her from having an exciting, tumultuous life as the wife of famed artist and womanizer Diego Rivera, who mentored her in her own work and encouraged her passions. Frida had liberal views and socialist politics. She was bisexual and promiscuous. She drank, abused painkillers, sang and danced, and fearlessly poured her pain and beauty into her paintings. Taymor has created a lively and dramatically emotive film with FRIDA, capturing her endearing resiliency with color, music, and, of course, art.
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