MUSE Film and TV

Like a real life version of Wes Anderson’s Tenenbaums, the Woodmans are a quirky family of distinct artistic talents, each with uncompromising dedication. Art is not a Sunday hobby, George Woodman says, “it’s serious business.”

The documentary begins as ceramicist Betty and painter George Woodman answer an unheard interviewer’s questions about their meeting, courtship, and marriage in the 1950s. We’re drawn into a story of delightful anecdotes and endearing close-ups of their wrinkled faces, the antithesis of had-it-up-to-here elderly couples.

George and Betty narrate the births of their “gift calamities,” Charles and Francesca. Betty describes the reason she had them was so that she could have the experience of being a mother. It becomes clear that the children represented a burden on the young couple’s art more than the joy of new life. During frequent family outings to museums, the children were sent off with notebooks and told to meet up in an hour so Betty and George could enjoy themselves “without children around [their] necks.” The kids were militantly trained to live and breathe art. The training paid off as Charles became a video artist and Francesca blossomed into a photography prodigy.

Throughout the film we see several of Francesca’s photos, mostly black and white nude self-portraits. We see clips of a short film of a nude Francesca lying on the floor of a bare room. Flour whirls inside through an open window and coats every surface. She carefully stands to reveal her silhouette and her off screen voice squeals that she is “so pleased.”

George describes his daughter as “interesting,” and that he would not be as keen on her if she were the type of girl preoccupied with friends and the prom. Francesca’s RISD peers, interviewed in the film, describe her unwavering ambition and “rock star quality.” Decontextualized excerpts from her diary scroll across the screen, revealing a psyche disturbed by isolation, overwrought sexuality, vanity, and masochism. At 22 she jumped out of a loft window five days before her father’s showing at the Guggenheim.

This is when the film gets disturbing. George and Betty’s blurry detachment sharpens as they recount the aftermath of their daughter’s suicide. Betty says she experienced pain, but not guilt; because “there is no way to deal” with the guilt. We wonder if her pain is so great that she simply cannot or will not revisit it. But constant references to the way their own art was subsequently affected, along with the candid tears of Francesca’s childhood and RISD peers, draw a clear point that something is amiss.

The film evolves to be a sort of psychological mystery. Every emphasis on every word choice becomes crucial to understanding what this film is about. Are the Woodmans cold-blooded or just hardened by the years? Are they defensive or aloof?

Thirty years is a long time, longer than Francesca lived after all. And the loss of a child by suicide can truly change the brain. But it’s impossible to shake the feeling that these parents were selfish and nonchalant from the start. They witnessed their daughter flail and suffer in the name of art.

It makes one curious about how the Woodmans themselves see this film, which seems to blame them on some level for Francesca’s suicide, or at least plant the seed for that thought.

The Woodman philosophy is that life should be dedicated to making art. And if their daughter chose to die after leaving behind a brilliant body of work, she simply did what she came to do and saw herself out. Francesca’s posthumous fame has admittedly made her family a bit jealous, as they explain over consequently sinister shots of sipping coffee and swimming in sunny Italy.

Both compelling and disturbing, the film is a portrait of the high price of a life, and a family, dedicated to art. Whether or not it aims to indict the Woodmans for child neglect, it raises key questions about the overlap of life and art.

The Woodmans is playing at Film Forum through February 1

Running time: 82 minutes

Director: C. Scott Willis

Review by Christiana Cefalu