La vie devant ses yeux

The narrative of 'Life Before Her Eyes' switches backwards and forwards between two episodes in the life of Diana McFee. The first is her teenage summer prior to a Colombine-style high school massacre - while the second occurs twenty years later, as her town prepares to remember this tragic event's anniversary. In the high school time-line, Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) hangs out with best friend Maureen (Eva Amurri), alternately discussing future plans and current boyfriends. Their fine performances are captured in radiant dreamlike cinematography which intensifies a sense of foreboding as they approach their fateful encounter with a homicidal armed schoolmate.

In the later sequences, a 30-something Diana (Uma Thurman) is embroiled in another crisis, with her marriage under strain and her daughter exhibiting rebellious tendencies similar to Diana's student behavior. Unfortunately these segments are handicapped by Thurman's lifeless performance. By the end of the film all the loose ends have been neatly resolved, but the climax is ruined by a plot twist which contradicts all the previous character development. Apparently this flawed finale was forced on the producers at Thurman's insistence.

I also saw this at Toronto, and visually speaking, this movie is one of the best looking films of the year. This director's first film was the great "House of Sand and Fog" and here he confirms how talented he is. Uma Thurman hasn't been better as she plays a woman who is now well into adulthood, living in the small town that she grew up in, with a professor husband and a little girl. I love the way Perelman uses flashbacks here to inform us about Thurman as a teen. In many films, flashbacks can yank us around and cut tension, but here Evan Rachel Wood is so good that the two characters are seamlessly interwoven in a way that we are treated to a complex character study of a grown woman who is driving herself mad with regret and anxiety and guilt. There's nothing more fascinating than watching conflict that is internal rather than external, and Thurman here is so good, I hope she is remembered come Oscar season.

Just a solid movie in every way. Good score from James Horner, the guy who did the music for "A Beautiful Mind" and "House of Sand and Fog", equally lovely scores in their own right.

This film is about an intertwining story of a teenage girl involved in a college massacre, and her life 15 years later.

When I watched "The Life Before Her Eyes", I did not enjoy it. I thought it was some kind of supernatural thriller but it was not. The young Diana and the grown up Diana were connected too thinly together. I did not see much connection between the two, apart from disconnected scenes such as the name Emma, or the similar behaviour between Emma and the young Diana. Hence, scenes become disjointed mess. The ending was utterly confusing, and I was left to wonder what I had watched for 90 minutes.

After reading about what really happened in the film on the message boards, I started to appreciate the film better. What I thought was thin connection happened for a reason. I can only say that I am not in the mood to play puzzles or to analyse a film in depth. If I watched it another time I might have enjoyed it more.

Just saw this in Kiev without knowing a thing (except it was in English) because Evan Rachel Wood is a great actress and going to be a major star. This has all the tension and nail-biting suspense of Rukrainian Vadi Perlman's House of Sand + Fog- too much considering the subject. (I could have questioned him at Molodist FF, but saw listing too late). Wood made her bones in this movie- being erotic, sharp, deep, beautiful, wounded, terrified in utterly effortless and unaffected acting. Uma is not my favorite actress- showing the deeply neurotic side of her that I think is real, but it works perfectly in this movie- as she displays the PTSD that every person back from Iraq knows too well. The parallel track of what is going on with her wanton, wild, and maybe damaged daughter adds more tension- has the poison of that event somehow soaked into her daughter? The cinematography is excellent as it charts the deep feelings between 2 best girlfriends, and the mystical internal turmoil over time and memory, now and then, real and illusion.

My only problem is that I know this subject intimately - I reviewed the book Copycat Effect: http://hammernews.com/copycateffect.htm , which proves that almost any publicity about these mass shootings causes kids and adults to reenact them, usually on anniversaries of previous events. "Eyes" showed the shootings again and again in lovingly graphic detail and I don't think this subject should get any major movie play- it's just too dangerous. See if, in a couple of years, some schoolyard shooter doesn't say he saw this movie 20 times. On the other hand, emphasizing the pain and horror of these events is also recommended by shrinks.

The sophisticated Perelman/Kasischke sensibilities will not be for all markets; this is essentially a rather highbrow film, with a surprise ending which will spoil it for some who want their movies to be straightforward, but which is essential to its philosophical heart. Thurman is outstanding as the older, pensive Diana, and Wood perhaps even better as the self-confident, rebellious younger version. Perelman's direction captures the dreamy lyricism contrasting with a sometimes brutal realism that is also found in Kasischke's beautiful and poetic 2002 novel. There won't be many better, genuinely adult movies this year, and most likely it will be ignored.