In honor of Women’s History Month – here’s an overview of excellent film and biography that you’ll enjoy. It is directed by Julie Taymor and is one of the movies you’ll see in our new eBook 101 Movies About Women Directed By Women. Find the film today and let us know what you thought.

An Artistic Rendering Of A Great Artist’s Work And Love Life

In a happy turn of events for a biography of a creative person, director Julie Taymor manages to do justice to the facts of Frida Kahlo’s life in Frida (2002) while giving the audience enough moments of magic-realism and wonder to entertain the audience as well. She developed that talent to balance fact and fabulousness creating The Lion King for Broadway and would use it again with Across The Universe (2007).

It helps a lot that Kahlo had an appetite for life that was almost as large as her talent for painting, as that allows Salma Hayek to spend time with a number of the 20th Century’s more interesting people. As an example of her range, consider that Kahlo spends time with Nelson Rockefeller (Edward Norton) and Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush), which may be a record on the political beliefs scale.

But the man who meant the most to her was another painter — Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) — whom she married. She was to say in later life that he was the second biggest disaster of her life, after the bus crash that crushed many of her bones when she was a teenager. Things got off to a bad start when a former girlfriend of her husband shows up at the wedding and starts displaying the luscious body parts Rivera is giving up for Kahlo’s “matchstick” legs. But by far the most interesting bit of the wedding and maybe the movie is the speech that Ashley Judd gives as poet-revolutionary-artist Tina Modotti. It is maybe the most clinical and unromantic description of marriage ever put on film, but she manages to turn it into a testament to love just the same. “I don’t believe in marriage,” is the first thing she says, calling it a “hostile political act” of “conservative religious nonsense” designed to allow “small-minded” men to keep women trapped at home that uses tradition as an excuse. Getting from there to an extremely romantic conclusion might seem unlikely, but she does it and it’s quite moving. It’s typical of the kind of thing you’re liable to find in an entertaining and informative film, a term that is widely used but rarely true. In this case it is. It’s a Biography, a Drama and it’s also very Romantic. 

Find our new eBook 101 Movies About Women Directed By Women on Amazon and soon to be at other eTailers. http://amzn.to/H77ry0

Girl Abused So Badly Her Personality Broke Into Several Parts

A lot of people thought a remake of the Sally Field-Joanne Woodward version of Sybil (1976) was unnecessary because the original is so good, but Sybil (2007) with Jessica Lange and Tammy Blanchard managed to crank things up a notch because it could be more direct in telling the story. Sadly, both movies are based on the true story of a child whose strict parents abused her so badly her psyche split into at least 13 pieces so her mind could deal with the horror of what happened to her. Sadly again, there’s really no need to tell you what might have happened to her, but it’s worth watching Field and Blanchard unveil her memories to the kindly doctor. Watch this if you’re felling sorry for yourself.

Daughter’s New Life Sounds Good,

So Mom Joins Her

To escape the confinement of family life back east, a young woman moves to Vancouver to be closer to a more relaxed atmosphere in Better Than Chocolate (1999). When she meets a hot young street artist, they decide to move into a sub-let flat together. She calls her sweater sets and pearls mother to tell her some of the news, and her mother — who is suddenly single — announces she’s coming out west with her teenage son for a visit. This is an OK structure for a sitcom, but this film is something wholly different as the daughter is gay. Instead of turning into some melodrama with lots of heartfelt speeches and bolts of understanding and stuff like that, director Anne Wheeler steps it up a notch to big-hearted comedy with a nice streak of fantasy and a message to just accept people for what they are and let them deal with the perils of love and sex on their own terms.

Women’s Love Lives Determined For Life By Newport Wedding

Two women’s lives are defined for almost 50 years by the events following a 1950s society wedding in Newport, Rhode Island, and Evening (2007) shows it’s more complicated than you can probably imagine. In the first place, Claire Danes and Mamie Gummer both wanted to marry the same man, who wasn’t the groom, and their attraction to him resulted in one death and an immense sense of longing for many people. We see this in the dreams and hallucinations of Vanessa Redgrave as the old version of Danes when she lies on her deathbed, with her two daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) nearby. They are surprised to hear about this man, and distressed that he and their mother were involved in a death. It comes to a peaceful ending when Meryl Streep (playing the old version of her daughter Gummer) arrives to visit Redgrave. Other stellar actors include Glenn Close, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Dancy, Patrick Wilson and Barry Bostwick.