The Woodmans

I'm surprised at the low score and negative reviewing of this documentary. Perhaps its a pinch too long but i don't think so. It seems peoples gripe is that there's too much of the family and not enough about Francesca? Um, shes dead. All that we can do is hope her family and friends at the time will communicate, all of whom do.

I hadn't heard of Francesca before but somebody recommended it and i thought it was haunting and a beautifully rendered documentary.It is interesting to see the competitiveness within an artistic household, that artists are not above trying to outdo their own family members. It also goes a ways to see why Francesca herself was so obsessively driven for success and recognition. Touching portrait of youth, mostly.

This strange documentary summarizes the lives of avant garde photographer Francesca Woodman and her artistic parents Betty and George. We know from the beginning that Francesca commits suicide and so we're alert to clues. Why do people commit suicide? It's very difficult to know, really, but in some cases we're able to see glaring contradictions in a person's family dynamic. The movie is mostly interviews with the parents. The mom, Betty, in particular, presents a strange and forbidding presence, goggling through thick brightly painted glasses, she seems arrogant and fragile at the same time. A narcissist, of course, but aren't most artists narcissistic?

A major clue is revealed near the beginning of the interview where the mom declares that she has dedicated her life to art and that she couldn't imagine living with a person who wasn't an artist, "I would come to hate that person!" she states. reveling her prejudice and intolerance for non-artists.

The mother's art is mediocre at best, large pottery shapes splotched with crude patterns in primary colors. Perhaps the mother envied the daughter's obvious talent for visual expression.

Most suicides by youngsters are the result of them feeling intolerably pressured by their parents' expectations. In Francesca's case there was a unquestioned directive: be an artist...or else! Francesca created her own style of art: pictures of her own, very attractive, nude body posed against shabby, desiccated interiors or wrapped in old wallpaper. The photographs, many of which are shown in the film, are stark, compelling and ironic. She was obviously very talented. She achieved some notice as a photographer, an artist in her own right, but as any artist must she experienced moments of self doubt. Since Francesca's expression was primarily visual and enigmatic her inarticulate diary excerpts, though quoted throughout, provide little insight into what she was going through. In any case her narrow though striking artistic style was bound to run our of new ideas, being so restricted in subject matter.

At some point Francesca thinks about giving up art and suggests maybe trying another course in life. Her mother is quick to put a stop to that: "That was ridiculous, of course; I told her, 'You can't DO anything else.'" I can only speculate, but the clues are pretty obvious. The talented but unhappy daughter must continue with a course that even she can recognize is a dead end, or face the hatred of her mother. Her therapist, a necessary accessory to people of that class, is useless, and her father, whose art is not at all bad, is a passive participant in the family drama.

As a whole the film is a downer like a slow-moving train wreck. It showcases Francesca's photography and is a sort of introduction to her work, but the intrusion of the parents, who may have been the motivation behind her success and eventually her downfall, is unwelcome except to provide clues to the mystery of her life and death. This film is just too long, it could have expressed the same material in half the time.

Her parents are absolutely awful people. I was interested in Francesca's life and work and the film focuses mainly on her parents, who are just self-absorbed, truly abhorrent rich people ("artists") with no hearts. Brother is pretty bad, too. They aren't ashamed to express jealousy over the posthumous success of their dead daughter. Her dad even attempts to copy her work and not in a honorable kind of way. The comment the dad made about how he would "hate" his child if they weren't interested in art basically shows you what kind of people they are. "There's a little coffin. I'm afraid some poor child has departed" is one of the last lines of the doc, spoken by George as he sees a casket go by in Asia. What kind of weird comment is that? So flippant. I hate to say this knowing the outcome, but no wonder she suffered so much in life. I would, too, if those people were my caregivers who were supposed to love me and instead viewed me as an object secondary to their sculptures.

This is a film about a very talented family of artists, with the focus on Francesca Woodman, a young photographer who committed suicide. Her parents, George and Betty, were passed their interests and work ethic on to their children. The areas they focused on were different, however. Betty did ceramics and painting, and achieved a high level of popularity. Son Charles does electronic art, and father George is presented as a mostly unsuccessful painter, which is misleading, because this Harvard grad was a professor at the University of Colorado in addition to his creative work.

The most intense member of the family was young Francesca, who made stunning black and white photos, mostly of her nude self in strange positions, and contrasted with fabrics and textured surfaces. She suffered from what sounds like bipolar disorder (her diagnosis was not mentioned) and committed suicide at age 22. She never got to see how popular and respected her work became. This tragedy is the heart of the movie, and you can see how it impacted her parents--her father in particular seemed to feel it the most, he is often uncomfortable while being interviewed. There are also interviews with interesting friends of the family that fill out the portrait.

Setting aside all of her brilliant and groundbreaking work, I was highly troubled by the detached nature of her parents. They seemed more interested in advancing their own notoriety through their daughter's work. The life of Francesca seemed almost an aside to them.

The film itself was worth watching, but I got something entirely different from what I expected. I was left mourning this young woman and gained an understanding of what had her so troubled by seeing her parents casual, almost forced reactions to her death. Her friends were much more upset.

Perhaps that was the point. Perhaps they are so devastated by her death that detachment was the only way to cope. I wouldn't say I blame them, but its the way they seem to revel in the attention that had me disgusted.