Director: Vadim Perelman
Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Eva Amurri, Brett Cullen, Gabrielle Brennan

- Reviewed by Linda

Two beautiful teenage girls wax philosophic in their high school halls...

They go into the girls' bathroom to chat, and moments later the two best friends hear distant gunshots in the building. When the shooter, a boy from their class, finds them and confronts them with his semi-automatic weapon, he asks the hysterical girls to choose between them who lives who dies.

The Life Before Her Eyes centers around this moment, and returns to it over and over. The friendship between Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) and her best friend Maureen (Eva Amurri) is presented, then fleshed out with flashbacks which all lead up to this point. Refreshingly, their friendship is not based entirely on chatting about boys and makeup, nor is it rife with hipster quips. They wonder and plan about the future. Diana is a bit of a wild child, but her favorite science teacher recognizes her smarts... she just needs to apply herself to something she is passionate about. Maureen, the more conservative of the two, is devoutly Christian and sees nothing wrong with the dream of finding the right man, getting married, and settling down. The wonderful part of their friendship is though the girls are very different, they don't belittle each other's dreams.

Flash forward fifteen years after the shooting: Diana (Uma Thurman) is dreading the anniversary of the massacre. She still lives in the same town and drives by the high school every day. She has a handsome professor husband, and a beautiful daughter who is showing the spark of rebellion (just like her mom), and she now lives in the nice part of town. But the anniversary and her memories are causing Diana to unravel.

The Life Before Her Eyes, as you can imagine, shows how one's life path could change in the instant in a moment of violence. The school shooting portion of the film, shown over and over, and specifically the confrontation shown over and over, is dreadfully horrific. The moment is revisited, and each visit gives a further glimpse of what went down. But it never gets easier to watch. Evan Rachel Wood is excellent, once again creating a young woman with depth and intelligence beyond her nubile and gorgeous looks. Eva Amurri is a convincing match as a best friend, and the more you get to know them, the harder it is to watch the confrontation scene over and over.

After seeing this film, I found out that it was directed by Vadim Perelman, who did the equally wrenching House of Sand and Fog. Like House, Life is a bit flawed, and I heard murmurs of confusion and bafflement in the audience after it ended. The oft-epeated flashbacks become, well, repetitive and sometimes a bit head-scratching. But like Fog, in my opinion, Life comes out ahead with the exceptionally strong performances of its cast—the girls are great, and so is Uma Thurman (in the first peformance of hers that I've liked in years). And like Fog, I was left a weepy mess (yes, just about "ugly crying") for the last act of the film. Though The Life Before Her Eyes is a horrifically sad film, it still retains a strange beauty, not only literally from the lush cinematography, but in its portrayal of life's hopes, dreams, and disappointments.

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