Brilliant and touching

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

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.

Though it is a documentary, The Woodmans is itself a piece of art. Like much art, it asks and suggests more questions than it answers. The first question might be: is this a film about art or a film about human psychology? Or maybe it is about how the two are connected?The Woodman family had four members, all of whom are/were dedicated to art, not just as an avocation, but as a way of life. The daughter, Francesca, committed suicide at a young age. Much of the film centers of her surviving family's perceptions of her life, her art, and what might have contributed to her suicide.In the end, each viewer can take what they want from this film. As a discussion of art, it touches on many common themes, especially the value or curse of art as self-expression. Does it have value simply because it allows the artist to express himself? Does affirmation from others make art more valuable? Does it have a therapeutic value? Francesca's mother says she stopped creating for a period after her suicide. When she resumed creating, was it a resumption of life? Or was the creation the impetus to go on living? She says that "art is about memory." Of course it can be much more than that.Of course we must ask if art is about introspection, self-examination, self-indulgence, all of these? It can direct one's focus inward or outward. The father comments on the "fragile" and "vulnerable" nature of the artist. Is that due to the artistic temperament? Or the product of seeking affirmation from others?He also observes that there may be a "psychic risk" of being an artist. This seems to be one of the central themes of the movie. But perhaps Francesca's art (and her behavior) might have been a clue to what many will see as clinical depression. Are some drawn to her art because of her (flawed) vision, like they might be to Van Gogh's?Whatever messages or questions one takes from this film, it does ask you to consider the nature of grieving and carrying on. And it might make one consider others in their own lives who have been or might have been victims of their own internal demons.It also makes a statement about the temporal nature of life and the longevity of art.

I liked it, it was well done and showed that serious Art and children do not mix well. The parents were for the most part what they had to be to create Art, they were complete artist and narcissists, and they were very good at both, but it left little room for parenting their children. Their daughter, who perhaps by their ques learned she was on her own early on, appeared for the most part quite needy, lonely, and sincerely obsessed with her art. Maybe as a way to bond remotely with her detached parents. The dedication of the parents to their craft was probably their daughters undoing but also the propulsion of their daughters genius. Yes they clearly loved their daughter, and they clearly feel a standard of guilt measured by all who have someone they take for granted until it's too late, and the parents seemed to be still in a lifelong recovery over their loss, trying to make up for their oversight. The parents seem to confront themselves about these issues and are honest and direct in what they thought they did well and the signals they missed, so I liked it, it was thought provoking and did not beg for sympathy.

When their avant-guarde artist daughter threw herself out a window to her death at 22, her artist-parents had to reassess their lives. The Woodmans focuses on what Betty and George Woodman do to find expression for their grief and their creativity.Francesca was a photographer in the vein of Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe, photographing herself in various levels of undress in both dehumanized and sensuous postures. To say she was precocious is to miss the point—like many artist-wunderkinder, she was self-absorbed, schooled very early on by her parents to be an artist. When she kills herself, perhaps out of frustration with her own languishing career, her ceramacist mother and abstract painter father try to move on with their own art. Betty switches to fine art ceramics and her father begins photographing young female nudes! What we soon discover is that the inner dynamic of this family consumed by art may be a deflection from engaging each other at the very personal level. Can art, which tries to engage us emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, distract us from discovering our true inner self and deflect us from self-awareness at the deepest levels?With ample images from Francesca's work and voicing from her videos and from detailed looks at her parents' art and their extensive comments about it, we are left to decide ourselves what was really going on in the hearts and souls and imaginations of these three creative people.