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In our weekly series Anatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, it's Salma Hayek nude, giving the best performance—and baring the most skin—of her entire career in the Frida Kahlo biopic Frida!
From the moment she first appeared on screen, whenever it was you first laid eyes on Salma Hayek, guaranteed you were bowled over by her beauty. How could one not be bowled over, Salma is the embodiment of the ideal Renaissance woman with her curves for days, large breasts, and child-bearing hips. To be honest, the first time I saw her—as Martin's ex-wife's maid Carmella on HBO's Dream On—she may as well have not spoken a word, because I couldn't pay attention to anything she was saying. In fact, thinking back, she may not have had a single line of dialogue in that episode.
Point being, it took a while for many of us to begin thinking of Salma as a legitimate actress. It didn't help that most any director who cast her, from Robert Rodriguez to Kevin Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld, couldn't help themselves in objectifying her seven ways from Sunday. In any event, there were a number of factors that prevented us from seeing her for the talented actress she always was, but thankfully that all changed when director Julie Taymor cast her to play the title role in her upcoming biopic Frida.
Taymor herself was something of a curiosity to Hollywood, having been a major figure in the world of experimental theatre. Her own career exploded in the late 90s thanks to her visionary translation of Disney's The Lion King to the Broadway stage, and Hollywood naturally came calling. For her debut feature, Taymor adapted one of Shakespeare's least adapted and most sinister works, turning out the nearly 3-hour Titus in 1999, instantly dividing critics and going virtually ignored by audiences.
Still in the good graces of notorious studio head Harvey Weinstein, Taymor got another shot. Hayek had brought the project to Weinstein several years earlier and the rotund producer, thinking it would be a surefire awards season sensation, put his estimable weight behind Taymor as director. We're going to table Weinstein for a moment, but like so much of this period of Hollywood history, he'll rear his ugly head again before long. Frida tells the story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Hayek) and her tumultuous decades-long love affair with fellow artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina).
Thanks to some gorgeous cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto—working on only his second English language feature—the film opens with the 1922 accident that left the 18-year old Kahlo with lower body injuries she would struggle with until the end of her life. Hayek's performance is breathtaking and earned her the only Academy Award nomination of her career. She plays Kahlo with a grace and beauty that belies her inner sadness and does a damn fine job of evoking all the right emotions in her many psychologically fraught scenes.
Kahlo's many loves throughout her life include both men and women, including notorious revolutionary Leon Trotsky, played in a strangely misguided performance by Geoffrey Rush. One of her dalliances with a woman is with the famous dancer Josephine Baker (Karine Plantadit-Bageot) and we get a brief lesbian encounter between the two 98 minutes in...
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In December 2017, Salma Hayek penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which she detailed allegations against Harvey Weinstein surrounding the making of this film. In the piece, she lays out in detail how she fought to obtain the rights to Kahlo's life story and then battled again to get Weinstein on board as a producer, knowing he was a man who wielded massive power and influence within the industry. She then goes on to describe the predatory behaviors he displayed around her and how her friendship with people like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez likely prevented her from being assaulted by Weinstein.
The entire article is worth your time, particularly if you'd like a stomach churning play-by-play of what it's like to end up in Weinstein's sight. In a particularly damning bit, she describes how he behaved on set, months after she had roundly rejected his multiple aggressively amorous advances...
"Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role."
In order to save the film, however, Weinstein had a suggestion...
"He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.
He had been constantly asking for more skin, for more sex. Once before, Julie Taymor got him to settle for a tango ending in a kiss instead of the lovemaking scene he wanted us to shoot between the character Tina Modotti, played by Ashley Judd, and Frida.
But this time, it was clear to me he would never let me finish this movie without him having his fantasy one way or another. There was no room for negotiation."
The result, in case you hadn't put it together yet, is that 18 seconds of film above.
Reflecting on the statements made at the beginning of this article, one can't help but wonder if the reason we hadn't considered Salma as an actress prior to Frida is that people like Harvey Weinstein went out of their way to crush those opportunities. It's terrible to think that I have participated in her objectification, but it's easy to see how culpable we all can be in the grand scheme of things. That seems to be the major lesson of the entire MeToo movement, or at least the one that we can most readily apply to our own lives.
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Catch up with our most recent editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene
—Kirsten Dunst Goes Topless for the First Time in All Good Things
—Kristen Stewart Pops Her Top Off in On the Road
—Uma Thurman Steals Dangerous Liaisons Out From Under Her More Famous Co-Stars
—Did They Really Kill a Chicken During That Infamous Pink Flamingos Sex Scene?
—A Naked Julie Michaels Kicks Keanu's Ass in Point Break
—Alexis Dziena Gives Aging Lothario Bill Murray an Eyeful in Broken Flowers
—P.J. Soles Establishes a Key Horror Movie Trope in John Carpenter's Halloween
—Can We Talk About Linnea Quigley's Barbie Doll Crotch in Return of the Living Dead?
—Innocent Blood Finds John Landis Trying to Get His American Werewolf Mojo Back
—The Insane Japanese Horror Movie House Features Equally Insane Nudity
—Howard Stern's Private Parts Lives Up to Its Titular Promise
—Neve Campbell Wastes No Time Making Her Nude Debut in When Will I Be Loved
—Amy Locane Gets Carried Away from Melrose Place to Bang Dennis Hopper
—The Shape of Water Opens with Sally Hawkins Masturbating in the Tub
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Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
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