The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)

Movie Review: The Life Before Her Eyes (2008)

By Winston • August 28, 2008

Get it at the TMB Store!

Starring: Uma Thurman, Evan Rachel Wood, Gabrielle Brennan

Director: Vadim Perelman

Writer(s): Emil Stern, Laura Kasischke

Studio: Magnolia

Rating: R

Official Bar Score:

Imaginative, impetuous and wild Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) can’t wait for her adult life to begin. Whiling away the final days of high school in the lush springtime, Diana tests her limits with sex and drugs, even having an abortion at one point, as her more conservative friend Maureen (Eva Amurri) watches with concern. But Diana’s aura of invincibility is shattered when a senseless act of violence erupts at school, forever changing the lives of the two best friends.

Fifteen years later, a grown Diana (Uma Thurman) is still trying to come to terms with the traumatic events of that fateful day. On the surface, the adult Diana has made a picture perfect life for herself. She’s still living in the sleepy Connecticut suburb she grew up in with her husband Paul, a professor at the local college. Her beautiful young daughter, Emma, is smart and creative, and possesses a fiercely independent streak reminiscent of her mother. But all is not well—as the anniversary of her adolescent trauma approaches, the darkness that Diana has tried to escape closes in. Meanwhile, her husband has become increasingly absent, her daughter has taken to hiding from teachers, and worst of all, Diana’s own grip on reality is starting to falter. From the Official Site

This was a bit of an up and down ride for me. The trailer made it look like a poor man’s “Crash”, which intrigued me enough to check it out and gave me a positive outlook on the film. But then the first 45 minutes happened, and I found myself, quite simply, bored. I liked the concept a lot, because up to this point no one has ever made a film about the effects of a school shooting on the victims. And the back and forth style they used to show Diana pre-shooting and 15 years after the fact was handled well. Unfortunately, other than the school shooting her story is typical small town teenage angst bullshit that is completely uninteresting. I found myself hitting the display button on my DVD remote a few times, waiting to be put out of my misery.

It’s fortunate then that the last half hour or so is absolutely fantastic, although I got the feeling that I should have been more prepared for the way things play out. After a mind numbing 45+ minutes, the fact that I was actually interested in what was going to happen was enough for me. I wasn’t expecting the movie to flick a switch and all of sudden be smart and entertaining.

Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood both hit home runs, but unfortunately their pitching sucked until the late innings. That is the best analogy I can come up with to describe what I felt when all was said and done. It’s a straight up drama, with little in the way of action, humor, or even suspense (the shooting scenes being a slight exception, but not much). It may be worth a rental if it sounds like your thing.