This is a good film, depicting the story of a 4 year old girl who likes to paint and her rise to "Stardom" as an artist. She has parents that encourage her, and an art dealer who promotes her.
Intertwined with interviews, fly on the wall type footage and excerpts of media coverage, the documentary gives an almost nicely rounded view of the situation. The rise and fall of this little girl and intrinsically her family. What I did not quite like was that the film maker at one point gives his opinion, I thought that the film would have been better without it.
Another thing that I felt was missing is a definite time-line of her works, since I have painted with my siblings and watched them change their way of expressing themselves with painting, going from what the "art-world", as shown in this film, calls "mature adult paintings" (filling out the whole canvas) to the typically childish figurative type (and a lot of white) within a short time. Considering this I personally would not call her an artist nor her family fraudulent.
At some point in the film Bar-Lev mentions that at the beginning he wanted to make a film about modern art, in this objective I think he fails, since there are no experts on art (nor on child development) interviewed by him. Mainly Mom, Dad, art dealer, fans (art collectors) and a local media reporter are shown. A documentary on modern art that I find informative, especially in dealing with modern art dealing is "The Mona Lisa Curse" by Robert Hughs.
If you are interested in Marla's story, then this is a good film to watch. In my opinion this film is not about modern art, child development nor the media just Marla's story the way the Bar- Lev saw it, no more and no less.
Intertwined with interviews, fly on the wall type footage and excerpts of media coverage, the documentary gives an almost nicely rounded view of the situation. The rise and fall of this little girl and intrinsically her family. What I did not quite like was that the film maker at one point gives his opinion, I thought that the film would have been better without it.
Another thing that I felt was missing is a definite time-line of her works, since I have painted with my siblings and watched them change their way of expressing themselves with painting, going from what the "art-world", as shown in this film, calls "mature adult paintings" (filling out the whole canvas) to the typically childish figurative type (and a lot of white) within a short time. Considering this I personally would not call her an artist nor her family fraudulent.
At some point in the film Bar-Lev mentions that at the beginning he wanted to make a film about modern art, in this objective I think he fails, since there are no experts on art (nor on child development) interviewed by him. Mainly Mom, Dad, art dealer, fans (art collectors) and a local media reporter are shown. A documentary on modern art that I find informative, especially in dealing with modern art dealing is "The Mona Lisa Curse" by Robert Hughs.
If you are interested in Marla's story, then this is a good film to watch. In my opinion this film is not about modern art, child development nor the media just Marla's story the way the Bar- Lev saw it, no more and no less.